/' '     6. 


AN 


OUTLINE  SKETCH 


OF 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


BY 

HENRY     A.     BEERS, 

Professor  of  English  in  Yale  College. 

AUTHOR   OF   "AN   OUTLINE   SKETCH   OF   ENGLISH   LITERATURE,"  "A 

CENTURY  OF  AMERICAN  LITERATURE,"  u  LIFE  OF  N.  P. 

WILLIS,"  "THE  THANKLESS  MUSE,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK: 

CHAUTAUQUA     PRESS, 
C.  L.  S.  C.  Department, 

805  BROADWAY. 
1887. 


The  required  books  of  the  C.  L  S.  C.  are  recom 
mended  by  a  Council  of  six.  It  must,  however,  be 
understood  that  reeomnr>endation  does  not  involve 
an  approval  by  the  Council,  or  by  any  member  of 
it,  of  every  principle  or  doctrine  contained  in  the 
book  recommended. 


Copyright  1807,  by  PHILLIPS  A  HUNT,  8os  Bioadway,  New  York. 


PREFACE. 


THIS  little  volume  is  intended  as  a  com 
panion  to  the  Outline  Sketch  of  English  Lit- 
erature,  published  last  year  for  the  Chautau- 
qua  Circle.  In  writing  it  I  have  followed  the 
same  plan,  aiming  to  present  the  subject  in  a 
sort  of  continuous  essay  rather  than  in  the 
form  of  a  "  primer  "  or  elementary  manual.  I 
have  not  undertaken  to  describe  or  even  to 
mention  every  American  author  or  book  of 
importance,  but  only  those  which  seemed  to 
me  of  most  significance.  Nevertheless  I  be 
lieve  that  the  sketch  contains  enough  detail 
to  make  it  of  some  use  as  a  guide-book  to  our 
literature.  Though  meant  to  be  mainly  a  his 
tory  of  American  belles-lettres  it  makes  some 
mention  of  historical  and  political  writings. 


4  PREFACE. 

but  hardly  any  of  philosophical,  scientific,  and 
technical  works. 

A  chronological  rather  than  a  topical  order 
has  been  followed,  although  the  fact  that  our 
best  literature  is  of  recent  growth  has  made  it 
impossible  to  adhere  as  closely  to  a  chrono 
logical  plan  as  in  the  English  sketch.  In  the 
reading  courses  appended  to  the  different 
chapters  I  have  named  a  few  of  the  most  im 
portant  authorities  in  American  literary  his 
tory,  such  as  Duyckinck,  Tyler,  Stedman,  and 

Richardson. 

HENRY  A.  BEERS. 


CONTENTS. 


I.  THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD,  1607-1765 7 

II.  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD,  1765-1815 51 

III.  THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION,  1815-1837.  86 

IV.  THE  CONCORD  WRITERS,  1837-1861 120 

V.  THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS,  1837-1861 158 

VI.  LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES,  1837-1861 197 

VII.  LITERATURE  SINCE  1861 240 

INDEX..  . 280 


OUTLINE   SKETCH 

OF 

AMERICAN   LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  I> 
THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD. 

1607-1765. 

THE  writings  of  our  colonial  era  have  a  much 
greater  importance  as  history  than  as  literature. 
It  would  be  unfair  to  judge  of  the  intellectual 
vigor  of  the  English  colonists  in  America  by  the 
books  that  they  wrote;  those  "  stern  men  with  em 
pires  in  their  brains  "  had  more  pressing  work  to 
do  than  the  making  of  books.  The  first  settlers, 
indeed,  were  brought  face  to  face  with  strange 
and  exciting  conditions— the  sea,  the  wilderness, 
the  Indians,  the  flora  and  fauna  of  a  new  world-^- 
things  which  seem  stimulating  to  the  imagination, 
and  incidents  and  experiences  which  might  have 
lent  themselves  easily  to  poetry  or  romance.  Of 
all  these  they  wrote  back  to  England  reports  which 
were  faithful  and  sometimes  vivid,  but  which,  upon 
the  whole,  hardly  rise  into  the  region  of  literature. 
"  New  England,"  said  Hawthorne,  "was  then  in  a 


'AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


state  'incomparably  more  picturesque  than  at  pres 
ent."  But  to  a  contemporary  that  old  New  En 
gland  of  the  seventeenth  century  doubtless  seemed 
any  thing  but  picturesque,  filled  with  grim,  hard, 
worky-day  realities.  The  planters  both  of  Virginia 
and  Massachusetts  were  decimated  by  sickness  and 
starvation,  constantly  threatened  by  Indian  wars, 
and  troubled  by  quarrels  among  themselves  and 
fears  of  disturbance  from  England.  The  wrangles 
between  the  royal  governors  and  the  House  of 
Burgesses  in  the  Old  Dominion,  and  the  theolog 
ical  squabbles  in  New  England,  which  fill  our 
colonial  records,  are  petty  and  wearisome  to  read 
of.  At  least,  they  would  be  so  did  we  not  bear  in 
mind  to  what  imperial  destinies  these  conflicts 
were  slowly  educating  the  little  communities  which 
had  hardly  as  yet  secured  a  foothold  on  the  edge 
of  the  raw  continent. 

Even  a  century  and  a  half  after  the  Jamestown 
and  Plymouth  settlements,  when  the  American 
plantations  had  grown  strong  and  flourishing,  and 
commerce  was  building  up  large  towns,  and  there 
were  wealth  and  generous  living  and  fine  society, 
the  "  good  old  colony  days  when  we  lived  under 
the  king,"  had  yielded  little  in  the  way  of  litera 
ture  that  is  of  any  permanent  interest.  There 
would  seem  to  be  something  in  the  relation  of  a 
colony  to  the  mother  country  which  dooms  the 
thought  and  art  of  the  former  to  a  hopeless  pro 
vincialism.  Canada  and  Australia  are  great  prov 
inces,  wealthier  and  more  populous  than  the  thir- 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  9 

teen  colonies  at  the  time  of  their  separation  from 
England.  They  have  cities  whose  inhabitants 
number  hundreds  of  thousands,  well  equipped 
universities,  libraries,  cathedrals,  costly  public 
buildings,  all  the  outward  appliances  of  an  ad 
vanced  civilization ;  and  yet  what  have  Canada 
and  Australia  contributed  to  British  literature  ? 

American  literature  had  no  infancy.  That  en 
gaging  naivete  and  that  heroic  rudeness  which  give 
a  charm  to  the  early  popular  tales  and  songs  of 
Europe  find,  of  course,  no  counterpart  on  our  soil. 
Instead  of  emerging  from  the  twilight  of  the  past, 
the  first  American  writings  were  produced  under 
the  garish  noon  of  a  modern  and  learned  age. 
Decrepitude  rather  than  youthfulness  is  the  mark 
of  a  colonial  literature.  The  poets,  in  particular, 
instead  of  finding  a  challenge  to  their  imagination 
in  the  new  life  about  them,  are  apt  to  go  on  imi 
tating  the  cast  off  literary  fashions  of  the  mother 
country.  America  was  settled  by  Englishmen  who 
were  contemporary  with  the  greatest  names  in  En 
glish  literature.  Jamestown  was  planted  in  1607, 
nine  years  before  Shakspeare's  death,  and  the  hero 
of  that  enterprize,  Captain  John  Smith,  may  not 
improbably  have  been  a  personal  acquaintance  of 
the  great  dramatist.  "  They  have  acted  my  fatal 
tragedies  on  the  stage,"  wrote  Smith.  Many  cir 
cumstances  in  The  Tempest  were  doubtless  sug 
gested  by  the  wreck  of  the  Sea  Venture  on  "  the 
still  vext  Bermoothes,"  as  described  by  William 
Strachey  in  his  True  Repertory  of  the  Wrack  and 


io  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Redemption  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates,  written  at  James 
town,  and  published  at  London  in  1510.  Shak- 
spere's  contemporary,  Michael  Drayton,  the  poet 
of  the  Polyolbion,  addressed  a  spirited  valedictory 
ode  to  the  three  shiploads  of  "  brave,  heroic 
minds"  who  sailed  from  London  in  1606  to  col 
onize  Virginia ;  an  ode  which  ended  with  the 
prophecy  of  a  future  American  literature: 

"And  as  there  plenty  grows 

Of  laurel  every-where, — 

Apollo's  sacred  tree — 

You  it  may  see 

A  poet's  brows 

To  crown,  that  may  sing  there." 

Another  English  poet,  Samuel  Daniel,  the  author 
of  the  Civil  Wars,  had  also  prophesied  in  a  similar 
strain: 

"  And  who  in  time  knows  whither  we  may  vent 
The  treasure  of  our  tongue,  to  what  strange  shores  .  .  . 

What  worlds  in  the  yet  unformed  Occident 
May  come  refined  with  accents  that  are  ours." 

It  needed  but  a  slight  movement  in  the  balances 
of  fate,  and  Walter  Raleigh  might  have  been  reck 
oned  among  the  poets  of  America.  He  was  one 
of  the  original  promoters  of  the  Virginia  colony, 
and  he  made  voyages  in  person  to  Newfoundland 
and  Guiana.  And  more  unlikely  things  have  hap 
pened  than  that  when  John  Milton  left  Cambridge 
in  1632,  he  should  have  been  tempted  to  follow 
Winthrop  and  the  colonists  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  n 

who  had  sailed  two  years  before.  Sir  Henry  Vane, 
the  younger,  who  was  afterward  Milton's  friend — 

"  Vane,  young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel  old  " — 

came  over  in  1635,  and  was  for  a  short  time  Gov 
ernor  of  Massachusetts.  These  are  idle  specula 
tions,  and  yet,  when  we  reflect  that  Oliver  Crom 
well  was  on  the  point  of  embarking  for  America 
when  he  was  prevented  by  the  king's  officers,  we 
may,  for  the  nonce,  "  let  our  frail  thoughts  dally 
with  false  surmise,"  and  fancy  by  how  narrow  a 
chance  Paradise  Lost  missed  being  written  in  Bos 
ton.  But,  as  a  rule,  the  members  of  the  literary 
guild  are  not  quick  to  emigrate.  They  like  the 
feeling  of  an  old  and  rich  civilization  about  them, 
a  state  of  society  which  America  has  only  begun 
to  reach  during  the  present  century. 

Virginia  and  New  England,  says  Lowell,  were 
the  "  two  great  distributing  centers  of  the  English 
race."  The  men  who  colonized  the  country  be 
tween  the  Capes  of  Virginia  were  not  drawn,  to 
any  large  extent,  from  the  literary  or  bookish 
classes  in  the  Old  Country.  Many  of  the  first 
settlers  were  gentlemen — too  many,  Captain  Smith 
thought,  for  the  good  of  the  plantation.  Some 
among  these  were  men  of  worth  and  spirit,  "of 
good  means  and  great  parentage."  Such  was,  for 
example,  George  Percy,  a  younger  brother  of  the 
Earl  of  Northumberland,  who  was  one  of  the  orig 
inal  adventurers,  and  the  author  of  A  Discourse  of 
the  Plantation -of  the  Southern  Colony  of  Virginia, 


12  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

which  contains  a  graphic  narrative  of  the  fever 
and  famine  summer  of  1607  at  Jamestown.  But 
many  of  these  gentlemen  were  idlers,  "  unruly  gal 
lants,  packed  thither  by  their  friends  to  escape  ill 
destinies;"  dissipated  younger  sons,  soldiers  of 
fortune,  who  came  over  after  the  gold  which  was 
supposed  to  abound  in  the  new  country,  and  who 
spent  their  time  in  playing  bowls  and  drinking  at 
the  tavern  as  soon  as  there  was  any  tavern.  With 
these  was  a  sprinkling  of  mechanics  and  farmers, 
indented  servants,  and  the  off-scourings  of  the 
London  streets,  fruit  of  press  gangs  and  jail  deliv 
eries,  sent  over  to  "  work  in  the  plantations." 

Nor  were  the  conditions  of  life  afterward  in 
Virginia  very  favorable  to  literary  growth.  The 
planters  lived  isolated  on  great  estates,  which  had 
water  fronts  on  the  rivers  that  flow  into  the  Chesa 
peake.  There  the  tobacco,  the  chief  staple  of  the 
country,  was  loaded  directly  upon  the  trading  ves 
sels  that  tied  up  to  the  long,  narrow  wharves  of  the 
plantations.  Surrounded  by  his  slaves,  and  visited 
occasionally  by  a  distant  neighbor,  the  Virginia 
country  gentleman  lived  a  free  and  careless  life. 
He  was  fond  of  fox-hunting,  horse-racing,  and 
cock-fighting.  There  were  no  large  towns,  and 
the  planters  met  each  other  mainly  on  occasion  of 
a  county  court  or  the  assembling  of  the  Burgesses. 
The  court-house  was  the  nucleus  of  social  and  po 
litical  life  in  Virginia  as  the  town-meeting  was  in 
New  England.  In  such  a  state  of  society  schools 
were  necessarily  few,  and  popular  education  did 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  13 

not  exist.  Sir  William  Berkeley,  who  was  the 
royal  governor  of  the  colony  from  1641  to  1677, 
said,  in  1670,  "  I  thank  God  there  are  no  free 
schools  nor  printing,  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have 
these  hundred  years."  In  the  matter  of  printing, 
this  pious  wish  was  well-nigh  realized.  The  first 
press  set  up  in  the  colony,  about  1681,  was  soon 
suppressed,  and  found  no  successor  until  the  year 
1729.  From  that  date  until  some  ten  years  before 
the  Revolution  one  printing-press  answered  the 
needs  of  Virginia,  and  this  was  under  official  con 
trol.  The  earliest  newspaper  in  the  colony  was  the 
Virginia  Gazette,  established  in  1736. 

In  the  absence  of  schools  the  higher  education 
naturally  languished.  Some  of  the  planters  were 
taught  at  home  by  tutors,  and  others  went  to  En 
gland  and  entered  the  universities.  But  these  were 
few  in  number,  and  there  was  no  college  in  the 
colony  until  more  than  half  a  century  after  the 
foundation  of  Harvard  in  the  younger  province  of 
Massachusetts.  The  college  of  William  and  Mary 
was  established  at  Williamsburg  chiefly  by  the  ex 
ertions  of  the  Rev.  James  Blair,  a  Scotch  divine, 
who  was  sent  by  the  Bishop  of  London  as  *'  com 
missary  "  to  the  Church  in  Virginia.  The  college 
received  its  charter  in  1693,  and  held  its  first  com 
mencement  in  1700.  It  is  perhaps  significant  of 
the  difference  between  the  Puritans  of  New  En 
gland  and  the  so-called  "  Cavaliers  "  of  Virginia, 
that  while  the  former  founded  and  supported 
Harvard  College  in  1636,  and  Yale  in  1701,  of 


14  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

their  own  motion,  and  at  their  own  expense,  Will 
iam  and  Mary  received  its  endowment  from  the 
crown,  being  provided  for  in  part  by  a  deed  of 
lands  and  in  part  by  a  tax  of  a  penny  a  pound  on 
all  tobacco  exported  from  the  colony.  In  return 
for  this  royal  grant  the  college  was  to  present 
yearly  to  the  king  two  copies  of  Latin  verse.  It 
is  reported  of  the  young  Virginian  gentlemen  who 
resorted  to  the  new  college  that  they  brought  their 
plantation  manners  with  them,  and  were  accus 
tomed  to  "  keep  race-horses  at  the  college,  and 
bet  at  the  billiard  or  other  gaming  tables."  Will 
iam  and  Mary  College  did  a  good  work  for  the 
colony,  and  educated  some  of  the  great  Virginians 
of  the  Revolutionary  era,  but  it  has  never  been 
a  large  or  flourishing  institution,  and  has  held  no 
such  relation  to  the  intellectual  development  of  its 
section  as  Harvard  and  Yale  have  held  in  the  col 
onies  of  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut.  Even 
after  the  foundation  of  the  University  of  Virginia, 
in  which  Jefferson  took  a  conspicuous  part,  south 
ern  youths  were  commonly  sent  to  the  North  for 
their  education,  and  at  the  time  of  the  outbreak  of 
the  civil  war  there  was  a  large  contingent  of  south 
ern  students  in  several  northern  colleges,  notably 
in  Princeton  and  Yale. 

Naturally,  the  first  books  written  in  America 
were  descriptions  of  the  country  and  narratives  of 
the  vicissitudes  of  the  infant  settlements,  which 
were  sent  home  to  be  printed  for  the  information 
of  the  English  public  and  the  encouragement  of 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  15 

further  immigration.  Among  books  of  this  kind 
produced  in  Virginia  the  earliest  and  most  note 
worthy  were  the  writings  of  that  famous  soldier  of 
fortune,  Captain  John  Smith.  The  first  of  these 
was  his  True  Relation,  namely,  "of  such  occur 
rences  and  accidents  of  note  as  hath  happened  in 
Virginia  since  the  first  planting  of  that  colony," 
printed  at  London  in  1608.  Among  Smith's  other 
books,  the  most  important  is  perhaps  his  General 
History  of  Virginia  (London,  1624),  a  compilation 
of  various  narratives  by  different  hands,  but  pass 
ing  under  his  name.  Smith  was  a  man  of  a  rest 
less  and  daring  spirit,  full  of  resource,  impatient  of 
contradiction,  and  of  a  somewhat  vainglorious  na 
ture,  with  an  appetite  for  the  marvelous  and  a  dis 
position  to  draw  the  long  bow.  He  had  seen 
service  in  many  parts  of  the  world,  and  his  won 
derful  adventures  lost  nothing  in  the  telling.  It 
was  alleged  against  him  that  the  evidence  of  his 
prowess  rested  almost  entirely  on  his  own  testi 
mony.  His  truthfulness  in  essentials  has  not,  per 
haps,  been  successfully  impugned,  but  his  narra 
tives  have  suffered  by  the  embellishments  with 
which  he  has  colored  them,  and,  in  particular,  the 
charming  story  of  Pocohontns  saving  his  life  at 
the  risk  of  her  own — the  one  romance  of  early 
Virginian  history — has  passed  into  the  realm  of 
legend. 

Captain  Smith's  writings  have  small  literary 
value  apart  from  the  interest  of  the  events  which 
they  describe,  and  the  diverting  but  forcible  per- 


16  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

sonality  which  they  unconsciously  display.  They 
are  the  rough-hewn  records  of  a  busy  man  of  ac 
tion,  whose  sword  was  mightier  than  his  pen.  As 
Smith  returned  to  England  after  two  years  in  Vir 
ginia,  and  did  not  permanently  cast  in  his  lot  with 
the  settlement  of  which  he  had  been  for  a  time  the 
leading  spirit,  he  can  hardly  be  claimed  as  an 
American  author.  No  more  can  Mr.  George  San 
dys,  who  came  to  Virginia  in  the  train  of  Governor 
Wyat,  in  1621,  and  completed  his  excellent  metri 
cal  translation  of  Ovid  on  the  banks  of  the  James, 
in  the  midst  of  the  Indian  massacre  of  1622, 
"  limned  "  as  he  writes  "  by  that  imperfect  light 
which  was  snatched  from  the  hours  of  night  and 
repose,  having  wars  and  tumults  to  bring  it  to 
light  instead  of  the  muses."  Sandys  went  back 
to  England  for  good,  probably  as  early  as  1625, 
and  can,  therefore,  no  more  be  reckoned  as  the 
first  American  poet,  on  the  strength  of  his  para 
phrase  of  the  Metamorphoses,  than  he  can  be  reck 
oned  the  earliest  Yankee  inventor,  because  he  "  in 
troduced  the  first  water-mill  into  America." 

The  literature  of  colonial  Virginia,  and  of  the 
southern  colonies  which  took  their  point  of  depar 
ture  from  Virginia,  is  almost  wholly  of  this  his 
torical  and  descriptive  kind.  A  great  part  of  it  is 
concerned  with  the  internal  affairs  of  the  province, 
such  as  "Bacon's  Rebellion,"  in  1676,  one  of  the 
most  striking  episodes  in  our  ante-revolutionary 
annals,  and  of  which  there  exist  a  number  of  nar 
ratives,  some  of  them  anonymous,  and  only  rescued 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  17 

from  a  manuscript  condition  a  hundred  years  after 
the  event.  Another  part  is  concerned  with  the 
explorations  of  new  territory.  Such  were  the 
"  Westover  Manuscripts,"  left  by  Colonel  William 
Byrd,  who  was  appointed  in  1729  one  of  the  com 
missioners  to  fix  the  boundary  between  Virginia 
and  North  Carolina,  and  gave  an  account  of  the 
survey  in  his  History  of  the  Dividing  Line,  which 
was  only  printed  in  1841.  Colonel  Byrd  is  one 
of  the  most  brilliant  figures  of  colonial  Virginia, 
and  a  type  of  the  Old  Virginia  gentleman.  He 
had  been  sent  to  England  for  his  education,  where 
he  was  admitted  to  the  bar  of  the  Middle  Temple, 
elected  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  and  formed 
an  intimate  friendship  with  Charles  Boyle,  the  Earl 
of  Orrery.  He  held  many  offices  in  the  govern 
ment  of  the  colony,  and  founded  the  cities  of 
Richmond  and  Petersburg.  His  estates  were 
large,  and  at  Westover — where  he  had  one  of  the 
finest  private  libraries  in  America — he  exercised  a 
baronial  hospitality,  blending  the  usual  profusion 
of  plantation  life  with  the  elegance  of  a  traveled 
scholar  and  "  picked  man  of  countries."  Colonel 
Byrd  was  rather  an  amateur  in  literature.  His 
History  of  the  Dividing  Line  is  written  with  a  jocu 
larity  which  rises  occasionally  into  real  humor,  and 
which  gives  to  the  painful  journey  through  the 
wilderness  the  air  of  a  holiday  expedition.  Sim 
ilar  in  tone  were  his  diaries  of  A  Progress  to  the 
Mines  and  A  Journey  to  the  Land  of  Eden  in  North 
Carolina. 
2 


i8  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

The  first  formal  historian  of  Virginia  was  Rob 
ert  Berkeley,  4i  a  native  and  inhabitant  of  the 
place,"  whose  History  of  Virginia  was  printed  at 
London  in  1705.  Beverley  was  a  rich  planter  and 
large  slave  owner,  who,  being  in  London  in  1703, 
was  shown  by  his  bookseller  the  manuscript  of  a 
forthcoming  work,  Oldmixon's  British  Empire  in 
America.  Beverley  was  set  upon  writing  his  his 
tory  by  the  inaccuracies  in  this,  and  likewise  because 
the  province  "has  been  so  misrepresented  to  the 
common  people  of  England  as  to  make  them  be 
lieve  that  the  servants  in  Virginia  are  made  to 
draw  in  cart  and  plow,  and  that  the  country  turns 
all  people  black,"  an  impression  which  lingers  still 
in  parts  of  Europe.  The  most  original  portions 
of  the  book  are  those  in  which  the  author  puts 
down  his  personal  observations  of  the  plants  and 
animals  of  the  New  World,  and  particularly  the 
account  of  the  Indians,  to  which  his  third  book  is 
devoted,  and  which  is  accompanied  by  valuable 
plates.  Beverley's  knowledge  of  these  matters 
was  evidently  at  first  hand,  and  his  descriptions 
here  are  very  fresh  and  interesting.  The  more 
strictly  historical  part  of  his  work  is  not  free  from 
prejudice  and  inaccuracy.  A  more  critical,  de 
tailed,  and  impartial,  but  much  less  readable,  work 
was  William  Stith's  History  of  the  First  Discovery 
and  Settlement  of  Virginia,  1747,  which  brought 
the  subject  down  only  to  the  year  1624.  Stith 
was  a  clergyman,  and  at  one  time  a  professor  in 
William  and  Mary  College. 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  19 

The  Virginians  were  stanch  royalists  and  chuich- 
men.  The  Church  of  England  was  established  by 
law,  and  non-conformity  was  persecuted  in  various 
ways.  Three  missionaries  were  sent  to  the  colony 
in  1642  by  the  Puritans  of  New  England,  two  from 
Braintree,  Massachusetts,  and  one  from  New  Haven. 
They  were  not  suffered  to  preach,  but  many  re 
sorted  to  them  in  private  houses,  until,  being  finally 
driven  out  by  fines  and  imprisonments,  they  took 
refuge  in  Catholic  Maryland.  The  Virginia  clergy 
were  not,  as  a  body,  very  much  of  a  force  in  edu 
cation  or  literature.  Many  of  them,  by  reason  of 
the  scattering  and  dispersed  condition  of  their 
parishes,  lived  as  domestic  chaplains  with  the 
wealthier  planters,  and  partook  of  their  illiteracy 
and  their  passion  for  gaming  and  hunting.  Few 
of  them  inherited  the  zeal  of  Alexander  Whit- 
aker,  the  "Apostle  of  Virginia,"  who  came  over  in 
1611  to  preach  to  the  colonists  and  convert  the 
Indians,  and  who  published  in  furtherance  of  those 
ends  Good  News  from  Virginia,  in  1613,  three 
years  before  his  death  by  drowning  in  James 
River. 

The  conditions  were  much  more  favorable  for 
the  production  of  a  literature  in  New  England 
than  in  the  southern  colonies.  The  free  and  ge 
nial  existence  of  the  "Old  Dominion"  had  no 
counterpart  among  the  settlers  of  Plymouth  and 
Massachusetts  Bay,  and  the  Puritans  must  have 
been  rather  unpleasant  people  to  live  with  for  per 
sons  of  a  different  way  of  thinking.  But  their  in- 


20  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

tensity  of  character,  their  respect  for  learning,  and 
the  heroic  mood  which  sustained  them  through 
the  hardships  and  dangers  of  their  great  enter 
prise  are  amply  reflected  in  their  own  writings. 
If  these  are  not  so  much  literature  as  the  raw  ma 
terials  of  literature,  they  have  at  least  been  fortu 
nate  in  finding  interpreters  among  their  descend 
ants,  and  no  modern  Virginian  has  done  for  the 
memory  of  the  Jamestown  planters  what  Haw 
thorne,  Yvhittier,  Longfellow,  and  others  have  done 
in  casting  the  glamour  of  poetry  and  romance  over 
the  lives  of  the  founders  of  New  England. 

Cotton  Mather,  in  his  Magnalia,  quotes  the  fol 
lowing  passage  from  one  of  those  election  sermons, 
delivered  before  the  General  Court  of  Massachu 
setts,  which  formed  for  many  years  the  great  an 
nual  intellectual  event  of  the  colony:  "  The  ques 
tion  was  often  put  unto  our  predecessors,  What 
went  yc  out  into  the  wilderness  to  see  ?  And  the 
answer  to  it  is  not  only  too  excellent  but  too  no 
torious  to  be  dissembled.  .  .  .  We  came  hither 
because  we  would  have  our  posterity  settled  under 
the  pure  and  full  dispensations  of  the  gospel,  de 
fended  by  rulers  that  should  be  of  ourselves." 
The  New  England  colonies  were,  in  fact,  theoc 
racies.  Their  leaders  were  clergymen  or  laymen, 
whose  zeal  for  the  faith  was  no  whit  inferior  to 
that  of  the  ministers  themselves.  Church  and 
State  were  one.  The  freeman's  oath  was  only 
administered  to  Church  members,  and  there  was 
no  place  in  the  social  system  for  unbelievers  or 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  21 

dissenters.  The  Pilgrim  fathers  regarded  their 
transplantation  to  the  New  World  as  an  exile,  and 
nothing  is  more  touching  in  their  written  records 
than  the  repeated  expressions  of  love  and  longing 
toward  the  old  home  which  they  had  left,  and 
even  toward  that  Church  of  England  from  which 
they  had  sorrowfully  separated  themselves.  It  was 
not  in  any  light  or  adventurous  spirit  that  they 
faced  the  perils  of  the  sea  and  the  wilderness. 
"  This  howling  wilderness,"  "  these  ends  of  the 
earth,"  "  these  goings  down  of  the  sun,"  are  some 
of  the  epithets  which  they  constantly  applied  to 
the  land  of  their  exile.  Nevertheless  they  had 
come  to  stay,  and,  unlike  Smith  and  Percy  and 
Sandys,  the  early  historians  and  writers  of  New 
England  cast  in  their  lots  permanently  with  the 
new  settlements.  A  few,  indeed,  went  back  after 
1640 — Mather  says  some  ten  or  twelve  of  the  min 
isters  of  the  first  "  classis "  or  immigration  were 
among  them — when  the  victory  of  the  Puritanic 
party  in  Parliament  opened  a  career  for  them  in 
England,  and  made  their  presence  there  seem  in 
some  cases  a  duty.  The  celebrated  Hugh  Peters, 
for  example,  who  was  afterward  Oliver  Cromwell's 
chaplain,  and  was  beheaded  after  the  Restoration, 
went  back  in  1641,  and  in  1647  Nathaniel  Ward, 
the  minister  of  Ipswich,  Massachusetts,  and  author 
of  a  quaint  book  against  toleration,  entitled  The 
Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,  written  in  America 
and  published  shortly  after  its  author's  arrival  in 
England.  The  Civil  War,  too,  put  a  stop  to  fur- 


22  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

t'.ier  emigration  from  England  until  after  the  Res 
toration  in  1660. 

The  mass  of  the  Puritan  immigration  consisted 
of  men  of  the  middle  class,  artisans  and  husband 
men,  the  most  useful  members  of  a  new  colony. 
But  their  leaders  were  clergymen  educated  at  the 
universities,  and  especially  at  Emanuel  College, 
Cambridge,  the  great  Puritan  college;  their  civil 
magistrates  were  also  in  great  part  gentlemen  of 
education  and  substance,  like  the  elder  Winthrop, 
who  was  learned  in  the  law,  and  Theophilus  Eaton, 
first  governor  of  New  Haven,  who  was  a  London 
merchant  of  good  estate.  It  is  computed  that 
there  were  in  New  England  during  the  first  gene 
ration  as  many  university  graduates  as  in  any 
community  of  equal  population  in  the  old  country. 
Almost  the  first  care  of  the  settlers  was  to  establish 
schools.  Every  town  of  fifty  families  was  required 
by  law  to  maintain  a  common  school,  and  every 
town  of  a  hundred  families  a  grammar  or  Latin 
school.  In  1636,  only  sixteen  years  after  the  land 
ing  of  the  Pilgrims  on  Plymouth  Rock,  Harvard 
College  was  founded  at  Newtown,  whose  name  was 
thereupon  changed  to  Cambridge,  the  General 
Court  held  at  Boston  on  September  8,  1680,  hav 
ing  already  advanced  ^400  "  by  way  of  essay 
towards  the  building  of  something  to  begin  a  col 
lege."  "  An  university,"  says  Mather, <4  which  hath 
been  to  these  plantations,  for  the  good  literature 
there  cultivated,  sal  Gentium  .  .  .  and  a  river, 
without  the  streams  whereof  these  regions  would 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  23 

have  been  mere  unwatered  places  for  the  devil." 
By  1701  Harvard  had  put  forth  a  vigorous  off 
shoot,  Yale  College,  at  New  Haven,  the  settlers  of 
New  Haven  and  Connecticut  plantations  having 
increased  sufficiently  to  need  a  college  at  their 
own  doors.  A  printing  press  was  set  up  at  Cam 
bridge  in  1639,  which  was  under  the  oversight  of 
the  university  authorities,  and  afterwards  of  li 
censers  appointed  by  the  civil  power.  The  press 
was  no  more  free  in  Massachusetts  than  in  Vir 
ginia,  and  that  "  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing," 
for  which  the  Puritan  Milton  had  pleaded  in  his 
Areopagitica,  in  1644,  was  unknown  in  Puritan  New 
England  until  some  twenty  years  before  the  out 
break  of  the  Revolutionary  War.  u  The  Freeman's 
Oath  "  and  an  almanac  were  issued  from  the  Cam 
bridge  press  in  1639,  and  in  1640  the  first  English 
book  printed  in  America,  a  collection  of  the  psalms 
in  meter,  made  by  various  ministers,  and  known 
as  the  Bay  Psalm  Book.  The  poetry  of  this  ver 
sion  was  worse,  if  possible,  than  that  of  Sternhold 
and  Hopkins's  famous  rendering ;  but  it  is  note 
worthy  that  one  of  the  principal  translators  was 
that  devoted  "  Apostle  to  the  Indians,"  the  Rev. 
John  Eliot,  who,  in  1661-63,  translated  the  Bible 
into  the  Algonkin  tongue.  Eliot  hoped  and  toiled 
a  lifetime  for  the  conversion  of  those  "  salvages," 
utawnies,"  u  devil-worshipers,"  for  whom  our  early 
writers  have  usually  nothing  but  bad  words.  They 
have  been  destroyed  instead  of  converted;  but  his 
(so  entitled)  Mamusse  Wunnectupanatamwe  Up- 


24  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Biblum  God  naneesive  Nukkone  Testament  kah 
wonk  }Vusku  Testament — the  first  Bible  printed  in 
America— remains  a  monument  of  missionary  zeal 
and  a  work  of  great  value  to  students  of  the  Indian 
languages. 

A  modern  writer  has  said  that,  to  one  looking 
back  on  the  history  of  old  New  England,  it  seems 
as  though  the  sun  shone  but  dimly  there,  and  the 
landscape  was  always  dark  and  wintry.  Such  is 
the  impression  which  one  carries  away  from  the 
perusal  of  books  like  Bradford's  and  Winthiop's 
Journals,  or  Mather's  Wonders  of  the  Invisible 
World :  an  impression  of  gloom,  of  night  and  cold, 
of  mysterious  fears  besieging  the  infant  settle 
ments,  scattered  in  a  narrow  fringe  "  between  the 
groaning  forest  and  the  shore."  The  Indian  ter 
ror  hung  over  New  England  for  more  than  half  a 
century,  or  until  the  issue  of  King  Philip's  War,  in 
1676,  relieved  the  colonists  of  any  danger  of  a 
general  massacre.  Added  to  this  were  the  per 
plexities  caused  by  the  earnest  resolve  of  the  set 
tlers  to  keep  their  New  English  Eden  free  from 
the  intrusion  of  the  serpent  in  the  shape  of  heret 
ical  sects  in  religion.  The  Puritanism  of  Massa 
chusetts  was  an  orthodox  and  conservative  Puri 
tanism.  The  later  and  more  grotesque  out-crops 
of  the  movement  in  the  old  England  found  no  tol 
eration  in  the  new.  But  these  refugees  for  con 
science'  sake  were  compelled  in  turn  to  persecute 
Antinomians,  Separatists,  Familists,  Libertines, 
Anti-pedobaptists,  and  later,  Quakers,  and  still 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  25 

later,  Enthusiasts,  who  swarmed  into  their  pre 
cincts  and  troubled  the  Churches  with  "  prophesy- 
ings  "  and  novel  opinions.  Some  of  these  were 
banished,  others  were  flogged  or  imprisoned,  and  a 
few  were  put  to  death.  Of  the  exiles  the  most 
noteworthy  was  Roger  Williams,  an  impetuous, 
warm-hearted  man,  who  was  so  far  in  advance  of 
his  age  as  to  deny  the  power  of  the  civil  magistrate  in 
cases  of  conscience,  or  who,  in  other  words,  main 
tained  the  modem  doctrine  of  the  separation  of 
Church  and  State.  Williams  was  driven  away 
from  the  Massachusetts  colony  —  where  he  had 
been  minister  of  the  Church  at  Salem — and  with  a 
few  followers  fled  into  the  southern  wilderness, 
and  settled  at  Providence.  There  and  in  the  neigh 
boring  plantation  of  Rhode  Island,  for  which  he 
obtained  a  charter,  he  established  his  patriarchal 
rule,  and  gave  freedom  of  worship  to  all  comers. 
Williams  was  a  prolific  writer  on  theological  sub 
jects,  the  most  important  of  his  writings  being, 
perhaps,  his  Bloody  Tenent  of  Persecution,  1644, 
and  a  supplement  to  the  same  called  out  by  a 
reply  to  the  former  work  from  the  pen  of  Mr. 
John  Cotton,  minister  of  the  First  Church  at  Bos 
ton,  entitled  The  Bloody  Tenent  Washed  and  made 
White  in  the  Blood  of  the  Lamb.  Williams  was 
also  a  friend  to  the  Indians,  whose  lands,  he 
thought,  should  not  be  taken  from  them  without 
payment,  and  he  anticipated  Eliot  by  writing,  in 
1643,  a  Key  into  the  Language  of  America.  Al 
though  at  odds  with  the  theology  of  Massachu- 


26  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

setts  Bay,  Williams  remained  in  correspondence 
with  Wimhrop  and  others  in  Boston,  by  whom  he 
was  highly  esteemed.  He  visited  England  in  1643 
and  1652,  and  made  the  acquaintance  of  John 
Milton. 

Besides  the  threat  of  an  Indian  war  and  their 
anxious  concern  for  the  purity  of  the  Gospel  in 
their  Churches,  the  colonists  were  haunted  by  su 
perstitious  forebodings  of  the  darkest  kind.  It 
seemed  to  them  that  Satan,  angered  by  the  setting 
up  of  the  kingdom  of  the  saints  in  America,  had 
"come  down  in  great  wrath,"  and  was  present 
among  them,  sometimes  even  in  visible  shape,  to 
terrify  and  tempt.  Special  providences  and  un 
usual  phenomena,  like  earthquakes,  mirages,  and 
the  northern  lights,  are  gravely  recorded  by  Win- 
throp  and  Mather  and  others  as  portents  of  super 
natural  persecutions.  Thus  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchin- 
son,  the  celebrated  leader  of  the  Familists,  having, 
according  to  rumor,  been  delivered  of  a  monstrous 
birth,  the  Rev.  John  Cotton,  in  open  assembly,  at 
Boston,  upon  a  lecture  day,  "  thereupon  gathered 
that  it  might  signify  her  error  in  denying  inherent 
righteousness."  "  There  will  be  an  unusual  range 
of  the  devil  among  us,"  wrote  Mather,  "a  little  be 
fore  the  second  coming  of  our  Lord.  The  evening 
wolves  will  be  much  abroad  when  we  are  near  the 
evening  of  the  world."  This  belief  culminated  in 
the  horrible  witchcraft  delusion  at  Salem  in  1692, 
that  u  spectral  puppet  play,"  which,  beginning  with 
the  malicious  pranks  of  a  few  children  who  ac- 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  27 

cased  certain  uncanny  old  women  and  other  per 
sons  of  mean  condition  and  suspected  lives  of 
having  tormented  them  with  magic,  gradually  drew 
into  its  vortex  victims  of  the  highest  character, 
and  resulted  in  the  judicial  murder  of  over  nine 
teen  people.  Many  of  the  possessed  pretended  to 
have  been  visited  by  the  apparition  of  a  little  black 
man,  who  urged  them  to  inscribe  their  names  in  a 
red  book  which  he  carried — a  sort  of  muster-roll 
of  those  who  had  forsworn  God's  service  for  the 
devil's.  Others  testified  to  having  been  present  at 
meetings  of  witches  in  the  forest.  It  is  difficult 
now  to  read  without  contempt  the  "  evidence " 
which  grave  justices  and  learned  divines  consid 
ered  sufficient  to  condemn  to  death  men  and 
women  of  unblemished  lives.  It  is  true  that  the 
belief  in  witchcraft  was  general  at  that  time  all 
over  the  civilized  world,  and  that  sporadic  cases 
of  witch-burnings  had  occurred  in  different  parts 
of  America  and  Europe.  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  in 
his  Religio  Medici,  1635,  affirmed  his  belief  in 
witches,  and  pronounced  those  who  doubted  of 
them  "  a  sort  of  atheist."  But  the  superstition 
came  to  a  head  in  the  Salem  trials  and  executions, 
and  was  the  more  shocking  from  the  general  high 
level  of  intelligence  in  the  community  in  which 
these  were  held.  It  would  be  well  if  those  who 
lament  the  decay  of  "  faith  "  would  remember  what 
things  were  done  in  New  England  in  the  name  of 
faith  less  than  two  hundred  years  ago.  It  is  not 
wonderful  that,  to  the  Massachusetts  Puritans  of 


2$  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  seventeenth  century,  the  mysterious  forest  held 
no  beautiful  suggestion;  to  them  it  was  simply  a 
grim  and  hideous  wilderness,  whose  dark  aisles 
were  the  ambush  of  prowling  savages  and  the  ren 
dezvous  of  those  other  "  devil-worshipers  "  who 
celebrated  there  a  kind  of  vulgar  Walpurgis 
night. 

The  most  important  of  original  sources  for  the 
history  of  the  settlement  of  New  England  are  the 
journals  of  William  Bradford,  first  governor  of 
Plymouth,  and  John  Winthrop.  the  second  gov 
ernor  of  Massachusetts,  which  hold  a  place  cor 
responding  to  the  writings  of  Captain  John  Smith 
in  the  Virginia  colony,  but  are  much  more  sober 
and  trustworthy.  Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth 
Plantation  covers  the  period  from  1620  to  1646. 
The  manuscript  was  used  by  later  annalists,  but 
remained  unpublished,  as  a  whole,  until  1855,  hav 
ing  been  lost  during  the  war  of  the  revolution  and 
recovered  long  afterward  in  England.  Winthrop's 
Journal,  or  History  of  New  England,  begun  on 
shipboard  in  1630,  and  extending  to  1649,  was  not 
published  entire  until  1826.  It  is  of  equal  author 
ity  with  Bradford's,  and  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  the 
more  important  of  the  two,  as  the  colony  of  Mas 
sachusetts  Bay,  whose  history  it  narrates,  greatly 
outwent  Plymouth  in  wealth  and  population, 
though  not  in  priority  of  settlement.  The  interest 
of  Winthrop's  Journal  lies  in  the  events  that  it 
records  rather  than  in  any  charm  in  the  historian's 
manner  of  recording  them.  His  style  is  pragmatic, 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  29 

and  some  of  the  incidents  which  he  gravely  notes 
are  trivial  to  the  modern  mind,  though  instructive 
as  to  our  forefathers'  way  of  thinking.  For  instance, 
of  the  year  1632:  "At  Watertown  there  was  (in 
the  view  of  divers  witnesses)  a  great  combat  be 
tween  a  mouse  and  a  snake,  and  after  a  long  fight 
the  mouse  prevailed  and  killed  the  snake.  The 
pastor  of  Boston,  Mr.  Wilson,  a  very  sincere,  holy 
man,  hearing  of  it,  gave  this  interpretation  :  that 
the  snake  was  the  devil,  the  mouse  was  a  poor, 
contemptible  people,  which  God  had  brought 
hither,  which  should  overcome  Satan  here  and 
dispossess  him  of  his  kingdom."  The  reader  of 
Winthrop's  Journal  comes  every-where  upon  hints 
which  the  imagination  has  since  shaped  into  poetry 
and  romance.  The  germs  of  many  of  Longfellow's 
New  England  Tragedies,  of  Hawthorne's  Maypole 
of  Merrymount,  of  Endicott's  Red  Cross,  and  of 
Whittier's  John  Under  hill  and  The  Familists  Hymn 
are  all  to  be  found  in  some  dry,  brief  entry  of  the 
old  Puritan  diarist.  "  Robert  Cole,  having  been 
oft  punished  for  drunkenness,  was  now  ordered  to 
wear  a  red  D  about  his  neck  for  a  year"  to  wit, 
the  year  1633,  and  thereby  gave  occasion  to  the 
greatest  American  romance,  The  Scarlet  Letter. 
The  famous  apparition  of  the  phantom  ship  in 
New  Haven  harbor,  "  upon  the  top  of  the  poop  a 
man  standing  with  one  hand  akimbo  under  his  left 
side,  and  in  his  right  hand  a  sword  stretched  out 
toward  the  sea,"  was  first  chronicled  by  Winthrop 
under  the  year  1648.  This  meterological  phenom- 


30  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

enon  took  on  the  dimensions  of  a  full-grown  myth 
some  forty  years  later,  as  related,  with  many  em 
bellishments,  by  Rev.  James  Pierpont,  of  New 
Haven,  in  a  letter  to  Cotton  Mather.  Winthrop 
put  great  faith  in  special  providences,  and  among 
other  instances  narrates,  not  without  a  certain 
grim  satisfaction,  how  "  the  Mary  Rose,  a  ship  of 
Bristol,  of  about  200  tons,"  lying  before  Charles 
ton,  was  blown  in  pieces  with  her  own  powder, 
being  twenty-one  barrels,  wherein  the  judgment  of 
God  appeared,  "  for  the  master  and  company  were 
many  of  them  profane  scoffers  at  us  and  at  the  or 
dinances  of  religion  here."  Without  any  effort  at 
dramatic  portraiture  or  character  sketching,  Win 
throp  managed  in  all  simplicity,  and  by  the  plain 
relation  of  facts,  to  leave  a  clear  impression  of 
many  of  the  prominent  figures  in  the  first  Massa 
chusetts  immigration.  In  particular  there  gradu 
ally  arises  from  the  entries  in  his  diary  a  very  dis 
tinct  and  diverting  outline  of  Captain  John  Un- 
derhill,  celebrated  in  Whittier's  poem.  He  was 
one  of  the  few  professional  soldiers  who  came  over 
with  the  Puritan  fathers,  such  as  John  Mason,  the 
hero  of  the  Pequot  War,  and  Miles  Standish, 
whose  Courtship  Longfellow  sang.  He  had  seen 
service  in  the  Low  Countries,  and  in  pleading  the 
privilege  of  his  profession  "  he  insisted  much  upon 
the  liberty  which  all  States  do  allow  to  military 
officers  for  free  speech,  etc.,  and  that  himself  had 
spoken  sometimes  as  freely  to  Count  Nassau." 
Captain  Underbill  gave  the  colony  no  end  of 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  31 

trouble,  both  by  his  scandalous  living  and  his 
heresies  in  religion.  Having  been  seduced  into 
Familistical  opinions  by  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson, 
who  was  banished  for  her  beliefs,  he  was  had  up 
before  the  General  Court  and  questioned,  among 
other  points,  as  to  his  own  report  of  the  manner  of 
his  conversion.  "  He  had  lain  under  a  spirit  of 
bondage  and  a  legal  way  for  years,  and  could  get 
no  assurance,  till,  at  length,  as  he  was  taking  a 
pipe  of  tobacco,  the  Spirit  set  home  an  absolute 
promise  of  free  grace  with  such  assurance  and  joy 
as  he  never  since  doubted  of  his  good  estate,  nei 
ther  should  he,  though  he  should  fall  into  sin.  .  .  . 
The  Lord's  day  following  he  made  a  speech  in  the 
assembly,  showing  that  as  the  Lord  was  pleased  to 
convert  Paul  as  he  was  in  persecuting,  etc.,  so  he 
might  manifest  himself  to  him  as  he  was  taking 
the  moderate  use  of  the  creature  called  tobacco." 
The  gallant  captain,  being  banished  the  colony, 
betook  himself  to  the  falls  of  the  Piscataquack  (Ex 
eter,  N.  H.),  where  the  Rev.  John  Wheelwright, 
another  adherent  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  had  gath 
ered  a  congregation.  Being  made  governor  of 
this  plantation,  Underbill  sent  letters  to  the  Mas 
sachusetts  magistrates,  breathing  reproaches  and 
imprecations  of  vengeance.  But  meanwhile  it  was 
discovered  that  he  had  been  living  in  adultery  at 
Boston  with  a  young  woman  whom  he  had  seduced, 
the  wife  of  a  cooper,  and  the  captain  was  forced  to 
make  public  confession,  which  he  did  with  great  unc 
tion  and  in  a  manner  highly  dramatic.  "  He  came 


32  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

in  his  worst  clothes  (being  accustomed  to  take  great 
pride  in  his  bravery  and  neatness),  without  a  band,  in 
a  foul  linen  cap,  and  pulled  close  to  his  eyes,  and 
standing  upon  a  form,  he  did,  with  many  deep  sighs 
and  abundance  of  tears,  lay  open  his  wicked  course." 
There  is  a  lurking  humor  in  the  grave  Winthrop's 
detailed  account  of  Underbill's  doings.  Winthrop's 
own  personality  comes  out  well  in  his  Journal. 
He  was  a  born  leader  of  men,  a  conditor  imperii^ 
just,  moderate,  patient,  wise,  and  his  narrative 
gives,  upon  the  whole,  a  favorable  impression  of 
the  general  prudence  and  fair-mindedness  of  the 
Massachusetts  settlers  in  their  dealings  with  one 
another,  with  the  Indians,  and  with  the  neighbor 
ing  plantations. 

Considering  our  forefathers'  errand  and  calling 
into  this  wilderness,  it  is  not  strange  that  their 
chief  literary  staples  were  sermons  and  tracts  in 
controversial  theology.  Multitudes  of  these  were 
written  and  published  by  the  divines  of  the  first 
generation,  such  as  John  Cotton,  Thomas  Shepard, 
John  Norton,  Peter  Bulkley,  and  Thomas  Hooker, 
the  founder  of  Hartford,  of  whom  it  was  finely  said 
that  "when  he  was  doing  his  Master's  business  he 
would  put  a  king  into  his  pocket."  Nor  were  their 
successors  in  the  second  or  the  third  generation 
any  less  industrious  and  prolific.  They  rest  from 
their  labors  and  their  works  do  follow  them. 
Their  sermons  and  theological  treatises  are  not 
literature,  they  are  for  the  most  part  dry,  heavy, 
and  dogmatic,  but  they  exhibit  great  learning,  log- 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  33 

ical  acuteness,  and  an  earnestness  which  some 
times  rises  into  eloquence.  The  pulpit  ruled  New 
England,  and  the  sermon  was  the  great  intellectual 
engine  of  the  time.  The  serious  thinking  of  the 
Puritans  was  given  almost  exclusively  to  religion  ; 
the  other  world  was  all  their  art.  The  daily  secu 
lar  events  of  life,  the  aspects  of  nature,  the  vicissi 
tude  of  the  seasons,  were  important  enough  to  find 
record  in  print  only  in  so  far  as  they  manifested 
God's  dealings  with  his  people.  So  much  was  the 
sermon  depended  upon  to  furnish  literary  food 
that  it  was  the  general  custom  of  serious  minded 
laymen  to  take  down  the  words  of  the  discourse  in 
their  note-books.  Franklin,  in  his  Autobiography, 
describes  this  as  the  constant  habit  of  his  grand 
father,  Peter  Folger;  and  Mather,  in  his  life  of  the 
elder  Winthrop,  says  that  "  tho'  he  wrote  not  after 
the  preacher,  yet  such  was  his  attention  and  such 
his  retention  in  hearing,  that  he  repeated  unto  his 
family  the  sermons  which  he  had  heard  in  the 
congregation."  These  discourses  were  commonly 
of  great  length;  twice,  or  sometimes  thrice,  the  pul 
pit  hour-glass  was  silently  inverted  while  the  ora 
tor  pursued  his  theme  even  unto  ;z'thly. 

The  book  which  best  sums  up  the  life  and 
thought  of  this  old  New  England  of  the  seven 
teenth  century  is  Cotton  Mather's  Magnalia  Christi 
Americana.  M  ather  was  by  birth  a  member  of  that 
clerical  aristocracy  which  developed  later  into  Dr. 
Holmes's  "  Brahmin  Caste  of  New  England."  His 
maternal  grandfather  was  John  Cotton.  His  fa- 
3 


34  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

ther  was  Increase  Mather,  the  most  learned  divine 
of  his  generation  in  New  England,  minister  of  the 
North  Church  of  Boston,  President  of  Harvard 
College,  and  author,  inter- alia,  of  that  character 
istically  Puritan  book,  An  Essay  for  the  Recording 
of  Illustrious  Providences.  Cotton  Mather  himself 
was  a  monster  of  erudition  and  a  prodigy  of  dili 
gence.  He  was  graduated  from  Harvard  at  fif 
teen.  He  ordered  his  daily  life  and  conversation 
by  a  system  of  minute  observances.  He  was  a 
book-worm,  whose  life  was  spent  between  his 
library  and  his  pulpit,  and  his  published  works 
number  upward  of  three  hundred  and  eighty.  Of 
these  the  most  important  is  the  Magnalia,  1702, 
an  ecclesiastical  history  of  New  England  from 
1620  to  1698,  divided  into  seven  parts:  I.  Antiqui 
ties ;  II.  Lives  of  the  Governors;  III.  Lives  of 
Sixty  Famous  Divines;  IV.  A  History  of  Harvard 
College,  with  biographies  of  its  eminent  graduates; 
V.  Acts  and  Monuments  of  the  Faith ;  VI.  Won 
derful  Providences;  VII.  The  Wars  of  the  Lord, 
that  is,  an  account  of  the  Afflictions  and  Disturb 
ances  of  the  Churches  and  the  Conflicts  with  the 
Indians.  The  plan  of  the  work  thus  united  that 
of  Fuller's  Worthies  of  England  and  Church  His 
tory  with  that  of  Wood's  Athena  Oxonienses  and 
Fox's  Book  of  Martyrs. 

Mather's  prose  was  of  the  kind  which  the  En 
glish  Commonwealth  writers  used.  He  was  younger 
by  a  generation  than  Dryden;  but  as  literary  fash 
ions  are  slower  to  change  in  a  colony  than  in  the 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  35 

mother  country,  that  nimble  English  which  Dry- 
den  and  the  Restoration  essayists  introduced  had 
not  yet  displaced  in  New  England  the  older  man 
ner.  Mather  wrote  in  the  full  and  pregnant  style 
of  Taylor,  Milton,  Brown,  Fuller,  and  Burton,  a 
style  ponderous  with  learning  and  stiff  with  allu 
sions,  digressions,  conceits,  anecdotes,  and  quota 
tions  from  the  Greek  and  the  Latin.  A  page  of 
the  Magnalia  is  almost  as  richly  mottled  with 
italics  as  one  from  the  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  and 
the  quaintness  which  Mather  caught  from  his  fa 
vorite  Fuller  disports  itself  in  textual  pun  and  mar 
ginal  anagram  and  the  fantastic  sub-titles  of  his 
books  and  chapters.  He  speaks  of  Thomas  Hooker 
as  having  "angled  many  scores  of  souls  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,"  anagrammatizes  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson's  surname  into  "  the  non-such;"  and  having 
occasion  to  speak  of  Mr.  Urian  Oaks's  election  to 
the  presidency  of  Harvard  College,  enlarges  upon 
the  circumstance  as  follows: 

"  We  all  know  that  Britain  knew  nothing  more 
famous  than  their  ancient  sect  of  DRUIDS;  the 
philosophers,  whose  order,  they  say,  was  instituted 
by  one  Samothes,  which  is  in  English  as  much  as 
to  say,  an  heavenly  man.  The  Celtic  name  Deru^ 
for  an  Oak  was  that  from  whence  they  received 
their  denomination ;  as  at  this  very  day  the  Welch 
call  this  tree  Drew,  and  this  order  of  men  Der- 
wyddon.  But  there  are  no  small  antiquaries  who 
derive  this  oaken  religion  and  philosophy  from  the 
Oaks  of  Mamre,  where  the  Patriarch  Abraham 


36  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

had  as  well  a  dwelling  as  an  altar.  That  Oaken- 
Plain  and  the  eminent  OAK  under  which  Abra 
ham  lodged  was  extant  in  the  days  of  Constantine, 
as  Isidore,  Jerom,  and  Sozomen  have  assured  us. 
Yea,  there  are  shrewd  probabilities  that  Noah  him 
self  had  lived  in  this  very  Oak-plain  before  him ; 
for  this  very  place  was  called  Oyy?/,  which  was  the 
name  of  Noah,  so  styled  from  the  Oggyan  (subcin- 
eritiis  panibus]  sacrifices,  which  he  did  use  to  offer 
in  this  renowned  Grove.  And  it  was  from  this  ex 
ample  that  the  ancients  and  particularly  that  the 
Druids  of  the  nations,  chose  oaken  retirements  for 
their  studies.  Reader,  let  us  now,  upon  another  ac 
count,  behold  the  students  of  Harvard  College,  as 
a  rendezvous  of  happy  Druids,  under  the  influ 
ences  of  so  rare  a  president.  But,  alas  !  our  joy 
must  be  short-lived,  for  on  July  25,  1681,  the 
stroke  of  a  sudden  death  felled  the  tree, 

"  Qui  tantum  inter  caput  extulit  omnes 
Quantum  lenta  solent  inter  viberna  cypressi. 

Mr.  Oakes  thus  being  transplanted  into  the  better 
world,  the  presidentship  was  immediately  tendered 
unto  Mr.  Increase  Mather." 

This  will  suffice  as  an  example  of  the  bad  taste 
and  laborious  pedantry  which  disfigured  Mather's 
writing.  In  its  substance  the  book  is  a  perfect 
thesaurus;  and  inasmuch  as  nothing  is  unimpor 
tant  in  the  history  of  the  beginnings  of  such  a  na 
tion  as  this  is  and  is  destined  to  be,  the  Magnalia 
will  always  remain  a  valuable  and  interesting  work. 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  37 

Cotton  Mather,  bom  in  1663,  was  of  the  second 
generation  of  Americans,  his  grandfather  being  of 
the  immigration,  but  his  father  a  native  of  Dor 
chester,  Mass.  A  comparison  of  his  writings  and 
of  the  writings  of  his  contemporaries  with  the 
works  of  Bradford,  Winthrop,  Hooker,  and  others 
of  the  original  colonists,  shows  that  the  simple  and 
heroic  faith  of  the  Pilgrims  had  hardened  into  for 
malism  and  doctrinal  rigidity.  The  leaders  of  the 
Puritan  exodus,  notwithstanding  their  intolerance 
of  errors  in  belief,  were  comparatively  broad-mind 
ed  men.  They  were  sharers  in  a  great  national 
movement,  and  they  came  over  when  their  cause 
was  warm  with  the  glow  of  martyrdom  and  on  the 
eve  of  its  coming  triumph  at  home.  After  the 
Restoration,  in  1660,  the  currents  of  national  feel 
ing  no  longer  circulated  so  freely  through  this 
distant  member  of  the  body  politic,  and  thought 
in  America  became  more  provincial.  The  English 
dissenters,  though  socially  at  a  disadvantage  as 
compared  with  the  Church  of  England,  had  the 
great  benefit  of  living  at  the  center  of  national  life, 
and  of  feeling  about  them  the  pressure  of  vast 
bodies  of  people  who  did  not  think  as  they  did. 
In  New  England,  for  many  generations,  the  dom 
inant  sect  had  things  all  its  own  way,  a  condition 
of  things  which  is  not  healthy  for  any  sect  or  party. 
Hence  Mather  and  the  divines  of  his  time  appear 
in  their  writings  very  much  like  so  many  Puritan 
bishops,  jealous  of  their  prerogatives,  magnifying 
their  apostolate,  and  careful  to  maintain  their  an- 


38  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

thority  over  the  laity.  Mather  had  an  appetite  for 
the  marvelous,  and  took  a  leading  part  in  the  witch 
craft  trials,  of  which  he  gave  an  account  in  his 
Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World,  1693.  To  the 
quaint  pages  of  the  Magnalia  our  modern  authors 
have  resorted  as  to  a  collection  of  romances  or 
fairy  tales.  Whittier,  for  example,  took  from 
thence  the  subject  of  his  poem  The  Garrison  of 
Cape  Anne;  and  Hawthorne  embodied  in  Grand 
father  s  Chair  the  most  elaborate  of  Mather's  bi 
ographies.  This  was  the  life  of  Sir  William 
Phipps,  who,  from  being  a  poor  shepherd  boy  in 
his  native  province  of  Maine,  rose  to  be  the  royal 
governor  of  Massachusetts,  and  the  story  of  whose 
wonderful  adventures  in  raising  the  freight  of  a 
Spanish  treasure  ship,  sunk  on  a  reef  near  Port  de 
la  Plata,  reads  less  like  sober  fact  than  like  some 
ancient  fable,  with  talk  of  the  Spanish  main,  bul 
lion,  and  plate  and  jewels  and  "pieces  of  eight." 

Of  Mather's  generation  was  Samuel  Sewall,  Chief 
Justice  of  Massachusetts,  a  singularly  gracious  and 
venerable  figure,  who  is  intimately  known  through 
his  Diary  kept  from  1673  to  1729.  This  has  been 
compared  with  the  more  famous  diary  of  Samuel 
Pepys,  which  it  resembles  in  its  confidential  char 
acter  and  the  completeness  of  its  self-revelation, 
but  to  which  it  is  as  much  inferior  in  historic  in 
terest  as  "  the  petty  province  here  "  was  inferior  in 
political  and  social  importance  to  "  Britain  far 
away."  For  the  most  part  it  is  a  chronicle  of 
small  beer,  the  diarist  jotting  down  the  minutiae 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  39 

of  his  domestic  life  and  private  affairs,  even  to  the 
recording  of  such  haps  as  this:  "  March  23,  I  had 
my  hair  cut  by  G.  Barret."  But  it  also  affords  in 
structive  glimpses  of  public  events,  such  as  King 
Philip's  War,  the  Quaker  troubles,  the  English 
Revolution  of  1688,  etc.  It  bears  about  the  same 
relation  to  New  England  history  at  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century  as  Bradford's  and  Winthrop's 
journals  bear  to  that  of  the  first  generation.  Sevvall 
was  one  of  the  justices  who  presided  at  the  trial  of 
the  Salem  witches ;  but  for  the  part  which  he  took 
in  that  wretched  affair  he  made  such  atonement  as 
was  possible,  by  open  confession  of  his  mistake  and 
his  remorse  in  the  presence  of  the  Church.  Sewall 
was  one  of  the  first  writers  against  African  slavery, 
in  his  brief  tract,  The  Selling  of  Joseph,  printed  at 
Boston  in  1700.  His  Phenomena  Qucedam  Apoca- 
lyptica,  a  mystical  interpretation  of  prophecies  con 
cerning  the  New  Jerusalem,  which  he  identifies 
with  America,  is  remembered  only  because  Whit- 
tier,  in  his  Prophecy  of  Samuel  Sewall,  has  para 
phrased  one  poetic  passage,  which  shows  a  loving 
observation  of  nature  very  rare  in  our  colonial 
writers. 

Of  poetry,  indeed,  or,  in  fact,  of  pure  literature, 
in  the  narrower  sense — that  is,  of  the  imaginative 
representation  of  life — there  was  little  or  none  in 
the  colonial  period.  There  were  no  novels,  no 
plays,  no  satires,  and — until  the  example  of  the 
Spectator  had  begun  to  work  on  this  side  the 
water — no  experiments  even  at  the  lighter  forms 


40  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

of  essay  writing,  character  sketches,  and  literary 
criticism.  There  was  verse  of  a  certain  kind,  but 
the  most  generous  stretch  of  the  term  would  hardly 
allow  it  to  be  called  poetry.  Many  of  the  early 
divines  of  New  England  relieved  their  pens,  in 
the  intervals  of  sermon  writing,  of  epigrams,  ele 
gies,  eulogistic  verses,  and  similar  grave  trifles 
distinguished  by  the  crabbed  wit  of  the  so-called 
"  metaphysical  poets,"  whose  manner  was  in  fash 
ion  when  the  Puritans  left  England;  the  manner 
of  Donne  and  Cowley,  and  those  darlings  of  the 
New  English  muse,  the  Emblems  of  Quarles  and 
the  Divine  Week  of  Du  Bartas,  as  translated  by 
Sylvester.  The  Magnalia  contains  a  number  of 
these  things  in  Latin  and  English,  and  is  itself 
well  bolstered  with  complimentary  introductions 
in  meter  by  the  author's  friends.  For  example: 

COTTONIUS  MATHERUS. 

ANAGRAM. 

Ttios  Tecwn  Ornasti. 

"While  thus  the  dead  in  thy  rare  pages  rise 
Thine,  ivith  thyself,  thou  dost  immortalize. 
To  view  the  odds  thy  learned  lives  invite 
'Twixt  Eleutherian  and  Edomite. 
But  all  succeeding  ages  shall  despair 
A  fitting  monument  for  thee  to  rear. 
Thy  own  rich  pen  (peace,  silly  Momus,  peace  !) 
Hath  given  them  a  lasting  writ  of  ease." 

The  epitaphs  and  mortuary  verses  were  espe 
cially  ingenious  in  the  matter  of  puns,  anagrams, 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD,  41 

and  similar  conceits.  The  death  of  the  Rev.  Sam 
uel  Stone,  of  Hartford,  afforded  an  opportunity  of 
this  sort  not  to  be  missed,  and  his  threnodist  ac 
cordingly  celebrated  him  as  a  "whetstone,"  a 
"loadstone,"  an  "  Ebenezer  " — 

"  A  stone  for  kingly  David's  use  so  fit 

As  would  not  fail  Goliah's  front  to  hit,"  etc. 

The  most  characteristic,  popular,  and  widely 
circulated  poem  of  colonial  New  England  was 
Michael  Wigglesworth's  Day  of  Doom  (1662),  a 
kind  of  doggerel  Inferno,  which  went  through 
nine  editions,  and  "was  the  solace,"  says  Lowell, 
"of  every  firesidej  the  flicker  of  the  pine-knots  by 
which  it  was  conned  perhaps  adding  a  livelier  rel 
ish  to  its  premonitions  of  eternal  combustion." 
Wigglesworth  had  not  the  technical  equipment  of 
a  poet.  His  verse  is  sing-song,  his  language  rude 
and  monotonous,  and  the  lurid  horrors  of  his  ma 
terial  hell  are  more  likely  to  move  mirth  than  fear 
in  a  modern  reader.  But  there  are  an  unmistaka 
ble  vigor  of  imagination  and  a  sincerity  of  belief 
in  his  gloomy  poem  which  hold  it  far  above  con 
tempt,  and  easily  account  for  its  universal  cur 
rency  among  a  people  like  the  Puritans.  One 
stanza  has  been  often  quoted  for  its  grim  conces 
sion  to  unregenerate  infants  of  "the  easiest  room 
in  hell  " — a  limbus  infantum  which  even  Origen 
need  not  have  scrupled  at. 

The  most  authoritative  expounder  of  New  En 
gland  Calvinism  was  Jonathan  Edwards  (1703- 


42  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

1758),  a  native  of  Connecticut,  and  a  graduate  of 
Yale,  who  was  minister  for  more  than  twenty  years 
over  the  Church  in  Northampton,  Mass.,  afterward 
missionary  to  the  Stockbridge  Indians,  and  at  the 
time  of  his  death  had  just  been  inaugurated  presi 
dent  of  Princeton  College.  By  virtue  of  his  In 
quiry  into  the  Freedom  of  the  Will,  1754,  Edwards 
holds  rank  as  the  subtlest  metaphysician.^^  his 
age.  This  treatise  was  composed  to  justify,  on 
philosophical  grounds,  the  Calvinistic  doctrines  of 
foreordination  and  election  by  grace,  though  its 
arguments  are  curiously  coincident  with  those  of 
the  scientific  necessitarians,  whose  conclusions  are 
as  far  asunder  from  Edwards's  "  as  from  the  center 
thrice  to  the  utmost  pole."  His  writings  belong  to 
theology  rather  than  to  literature,  but  there  is  an 
intensity  and  a  spiritual  elevation  about  them, 
apart  from  the  profundity  and  acuteness  of  the 
thought,  which  lift  them  here  and  there  into  the 
finer  ether  of  purely  emotional  or  imaginative  art. 
He  dwelt  rather  upon  the  terrors  than  the  comfort 
of  the  word,  and  his  chosen  themes  were  the  dog 
mas  of  predestination,  original  sin,  total  deprav 
ity,  and  eternal  punishment.  The  titles  of  his  ser 
mons  are  significant:  Men  Naturally  God's  Ene 
mies,  Wrath  upon  the  Wicked  to  tht  Uttermost,  The. 
Final  Judgment,  etc.  "  A  natural  man,"  he  wrote 
in  the  first  of  these  discourses,  ''has  a  heart  like 
the  heart  of  a  devil.  .  .  .  The  heart  of  a  natural 
man  is  as  destitute  of  love  to  God  as  a  dead,  stiff, 
cold  corpse  is  of  vital  heat."  Perhaps  the  most 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  43 

famous  of  Edwards's  sermons  was  Sinners  in  the 
Hands  of  an  Angry  God,  preached  at  Enfield, 
Conn.,  July  8,  1741,  uat  a  time  of  great  awaken 
ings,"  and  upon  the  ominous  text,  Their  foot  shall 
slide  in  due  time,  "The  God  that  holds  you  overj 
the  pit  of  hell "  runs  an  oft-quoted  passage  from!' 
this  powerful  denunciation  of  the  wrath  to  come, 
"much  as  one  holds  a  spider  or  some  loathsome 
insect  over  the  fire,  abhors  you,  and  is  dreadfully 
provoked.  .  .  .  You  are  ten  thousand  times  more 
abominable  in  his  eyes  than  the  most  hateful  ven 
omous  serpent  is  in  ours.  .  .  .  You  hang  by  a  slender 
thread,  with  the  flames  of  divine  wrath  flashing 
about  it.  ...  If  you  cry  to  God  to  pity  you,  he 
will  be  so  far  from  pitying  you  in  your  doleful  case 
that  he  will  only  tread  you  under  foot.  .  .  .  He 
will  crush  out  your  blood  and  make  it  fly,  and  it 
shall  be  sprinkled  on  his  garments  so  as  to  stain 
all  his  raiment."  But  Edwards  was  a  rapt  soul,  posN. 
sessed  with  the  love  as  well  as  the  fear  of  the  God,  and  n 
there  are  passages  of  sweet  and  exalted  feeling  in  his 
Treatise  Concerning  Religious  Affections,  1746.  Such 
is  his  portrait  of  Sarah  Pierpont,  "  a  young  lady  in 
New  Haven,"  who  afterward  became  his  wife,  and 
who  "will  sometimes  go  about  from  place  to  place 
singing  sweetly,  and  no  one  knows  for  what.  She 
loves  to  be  alone,  walking  in  the  fields  and  groves, 
and  seems  to  have  some  one  invisible  always  con 
versing  with  her."  Ed\vards's  printed  works  num 
ber  thirty-six  titles.  A  complete  edition  of  them 
in  ten  volumes  was  published  in  1829  by  his  great- 


44  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

grandson,  Sereno  Dvvight.  The  memoranda  from 
Edwards's  note-books,  quoted  by  his  editor  and 
biographer,  exhibit  a  remarkable  precocity.  Even 
as  a  school-boy  and  a  college  student  he  had  made 
deep  guesses  in  physics  as  well  as  metaphysics, 
and,  as  might  have  been  predicted  of  a  youth  of 
his  philosophical  insight  and  ideal  cast  of  mind, 
he  had  early  anticipated  Berkeley  in  denying  the 
existence  of  matter.  In  passing  from  Mather  to 
Edwards,  we  step  from  the  seventeenth  to  the 
eighteenth  century.  There  is  the  same  difference 
between  them  in  style  and  turn  of  thought  as  be 
tween  Milton  and  Locke,  or  between  Fuller  and 
Dryden.  The  learned  digressions,  the  witty  con 
ceits,  the  perpetual  interlarding  of  the  text  with 
scraps  of  Latin,  have  fallen  off,  even  as  the  full- 
bottomed  wig  and  the  clerical  gown  and  bands 
have  been  laid  aside  for  the  undistinguishing  dress 
of  the  modern  minister.  In  Edwards's  English  all 
is  simple,  precise,  direct,  and  business-like. 

Benjamin  Franklin  (1706-1790),  who  was  strictly 
contemporary  with  Edwards,  was  a  contrast  to  him 
in  every  respect.  As  Edwards  represents  the  spir 
ituality  and  other-worldliness  of  Puritanism,  FrankV 
lin  stands  for  the  worldly  and  secular  side  of  Amer 
ican  character,  and  he  illustrates  the  development" 
of  the  New  England  Englishman  into  the  modern 
Yankee.  Clear  rather  than  subtle,  without  ideality 
or  romance  or  fineness  of  emotion  or  poetic  lift, 
intensely  practical  and  utilitarian,  broad-minded, 
inventive,  shrewd,  versatile,  Franklin's  sturdy  figure 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  45 

became  typical  of  his  time  and  his  people.  He  was 
the  first  and  the  only  man  of  letters  in  colonial 
America  who  acquired  a  cosmopolitan  fame,  and 
impressed  his  characteristic  Americanism  upon  the 
mind  of  Europe.  He  was  the  embodiment  of  com 
mon  sense  and  of  the  useful  virtues;  with  the  en 
terprise  but  without  the  nervousness  of  his  mod 
ern  compatriots,  uniting  the  philosopher's  openness 
of  mind  with  the  sagacity  and  quickness  of  resource 
of  the  self-made  business  man.  He  was  repre 
sentative  also  of  his  age,  an  age  of  aufkl&rung, 
eclaircissement ,  or  "clearing  up."  By  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century  a  change  had  taken  place 
in  American  society.  Trade  had  increased  be 
tween  the  different  colonies;  Boston,  New  York, 
and  Philadelphia  were  considerable  towns;  demo 
cratic  feeling  was  spreading;  over  forty  newspapers 
were  published  in  America  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
Revolution  ;  politics  claimed  more  attention  than 
formerly,  and  theology  less.  With  all  this  inter 
course  and  mutual  reaction  of  the  various  colonies 
upon  one  another,  the  isolated  theocracy  of  New 
England  naturally  relaxed  somewhat  of  its  grip  on 
the  minds  of  the  laity.  When  Franklin  was  a 
printer's  apprentice  in  Boston,  setting  type  on  his 
brother's  New  England  Courant,  the  fourth  Amer 
ican  newspaper,  he  got  hold  of  an  odd  volume  of 
the  Spectator,  and  formed  his  style  upon  Addison, 
whose  manner  he  afterward  imitated  in  his  Busy- 
Body  papers  in  the  Philadelphia  Weekly  Mercury. 
He  also  read  Locke  and  the  English  deistical  writ- 


46  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

ers,  Collins  and  Shaftesbury,  and  became  himself  a 
deist  and  free-thinker;  and  subsequently  when  prac 
ticing  his  trade  in  London,  in  1724-26,  he  made 
the  acquaintance  of  Dr.  Mandeville,  author  of  the 
Fable  of  the  Bees,  at  a  pale-ale  house  in  Cheapside, 
called  "  The  Horns,"  where  the  famous  free-thinker 
presided  over  a  club  of  wits  and  boon  companions. 
Though  a  native  of  Boston,  Franklin  is  identified 
with  Philadelphia,  whither  he  arrived  in  1723,  a 
runaway  'prentice  boy,  "  whose  stock  of  cash  con 
sisted  of  a  Dutch  dollar  and  about  a  shilling  in 
copper."  The  description  in  his  Autobiography  of 
his  walking  up  Market  Street  munching  a  loaf  of 
bread,  and  passing  his  future  wife,  standing  on  her 
father's  doorstep,  has  become  almost  as  familiar  as 
the  anecdote  about  Whittington  and  his  cat. 

It  was  in  the  practical  sphere  that  Franklin  was 
greatest,  as  an  originator  and  executor  of  projects 
for  the  general  welfare.  The  list  of  his  public 
services  is  almost  endless.  He  organized  the 
Philadelphia  fire  department  and  street  cleaning 
service,  and  the  colonial  postal  system  which  grew 
into  the  United  States  Post  Office  Department. 
He  started  the  Philadelphia  public  library,  the 
American  Philosophical  Society,  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania,  and  the  first  American  magazine, 
The  General  Magazine  and  Historical  Chronicle;  so 
that  he  was  almost  singly  the  fath  er  of  whatever  intel 
lectual  life  the  Pennsylvania  colony  could  boast  of. 
In  1754,  when  commissioners  from  the  colonies  met 
at  Albany,  Fra»*lin  proposed  a  plan,  which  was 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  47 

adopted,  for  the  union  of  all  the  colonies  under 
one  government.  But  all  these  things,  as  well  as 
his  mission  to  England  in  1757,  on  behalf  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Assembly  in  its  dispute  with  the  pro 
prietaries  ;  his  share  in  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence — of -which  he  was  one  of  the  signers — 
and  his  residence  in  France  as  Embassador  of  the 
United  Colonies,  belong  to  the  political  history  of 
the  country;  to  the  history  of  American  science 
belong  his  celebrated  experiments  in  electricity; 
and  his  benefits  to  mankind  in  both  of  these  de 
partments  were  aptly  summed  up  in  the  famous 
epigram  of  the  French  statesman  Turgot: 

"  Erupuit  coelo  fuhnen  sccptmiuque  tyrannis." 

Franklin's  success  in  Europe  was  such  as  no 
American  had  yet  achieved,  as  few  Americans 
since  him  have  achieved.  Hume  and  Voltaire 
were  among  his  acquaintances  and  his  professed 
admirers.  In  France  he  was  fairly  idolized,  and 
when  he  died  Mirabeau  announced,  "  The  genius 
which  has  freed  America  and  poured  a  flood  of 
light  over  Europe  has  returned  to  the  bosom  of 
the  Divinity/' 

Franklin  was  a  great  man,  but  hardly  a  great 
writer,  though  as  a  writer,  too,  he  had  many  ad 
mirable  and  some  great  qualities.  Among  these 
were  the  crystal  clearness  and  simplicity  of  his  style. 
His  more  strictly  literary  performances,  such  as  his 
essays  after  the  Spectator,  hardly  rise  above  medi 
ocrity,  and  are  neither  better  nor  w&rse  than  other 


48  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

imitations  of  Addison.  But  in  some  of  his  lighter 
bagatelles  there  are  a  homely  wisdom  and  a  charm 
ing  playfulness  which  have  won  them  enduring 
favor.  Such  are  his  famous  story  of  the  Whistle, 
his  Dialogue  between  Franklin  and  the  Gout,  his 
letters  to  Madame  Helvetius,  and  his  verses  enti 
tled  Paper.  The  greater  portion  of  his  writings 
consists  of  papers  on  general  politics,  commerce, 
and  political  economy,  contributions  to  the  public 
questions  of  his  day.  These  are  of  the  nature  of 
journalism  rather  than  of  literature,  and  many  of 
them  were  published  in  his  newspaper,  the  Penn 
sylvania  Gazette,  the  medium  through  which  for 
many  years  he  most  strongly  influenced  American 
opinion.  The  most  popular  of  his  writings  were 
his  Autobiography  and  Poor  Richard's  Almanac. 
The  former  of  these  was  begun  in  1771,  resumed 
in  1788,  but  never  completed.  It  has  remained 
the  most  widely  current  book  in  our  colonial  lit 
erature.  Poor  Richards  Almanac,  begun  in  1732 
and  continued  for  about  twenty-five  years,  had  an 
annual  circulation  of  ten  thousand  copies.  It  was 
filled  with  proverbial  sayings  in  prose  and  verse, 
Inculcating  the  virtues  of  industry,  honesty,  and 
frugality.*  Some  of  these  were  original  with 
Franklin,  others  were  selected  from  the  proverbial 
wisdom  of  the  ages,  but  a  new  force  was  given 

*  The  Way  to  Wealth,  Plan  for  Saving  One  Hundred 
Thousand  Pounds,  Rules  of  Health,  Advice  to  a  Young 
Tradesman,  The  Way  to  Make  Money  Plenty  in  Every 
Mail's  Pocket,  etc. 


THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD.  49 

them  by  pungent  turns  of  expression.  Poor  Rich 
ard's  saws  were  such  as  these  :  "  Little  strokes 
fell  great  oaks;"  "Three  removes  are  as  bad  as 
a  fire;"  "Early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise  makes  a 
man  healthy,  wealthy,  and  wise  ;"  "  Never  leave 
that  till  to-morrow  which  you  can  do  to-day;" 
"What  maintains  one  vice  would  bring  up  two 
children;"  "It  is  hard  for  an  empty  bag  to  stand 
upright." 

Now  and  then  there  are  truths  of  a  higher  kind 
than  these  in  Franklin,  and  Sainte  Beuve,  the  great 
French  critic,  quotes,  as  an  example  of  his  occa 
sional  finer  moods,  the  saying,  "  Truth  and  sincer 
ity  have  a  certain  distinguishing  native  luster  about 
them  which  cannot  be  counterfeited ;  they  are  like 
fire  and  flame  that  cannot  be  painted."  But  the 
sage  who  invented  the  Franklin  stove  had  no  dis 
dain  of  small  utilities;  and  in  general  the  last  word 
of  his  philosophy  is  well  expressed  in  a  passage  of 
his  Autobiography :  "  Human  felicity  is  produced 
not  so  much  by  great  pieces  of  good  fortune,  that 
seldom  happen,  as  by  little  advantages  that  occur 
every  day ;  thus,  if  you  teach  a  poor  young  man  to 
shave  himself  and  keep  his  razor  in  order,  you  may 
contribute  more  to  the  happiness  of  his  life  than  in 
giving  him  a  thousand  guineas." 

m 

1.  Captain  John  Smith.      A  True  Relation   of 
Virginia.     Deane's  edition.     Boston:  1866. 

2.  Cotton  Mather.     Magnalia  Christi  Americana. 
Hartford:   1820. 

4 


50  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

3.  Samuel  Sewall.     Diary.     Massachusetts  His 
torical  Collections.     Fifth  Series.     Vols.  v,  vi,  and 
vii.     Boston:   1878, 

4.  Jonathan  Edwards.     Eight  Sermons  on  Vari 
ous  Occasions.       Vol.    vii.    of   Edwards's   Words. 
Edited  by  Sereno  Dwight.     New  York:   1829. 

5.  Benjamin  Franklin.     Autobiography.     Edited 
by  John   Bigelow.       Philadelphia:    1869.       [J.    B- 
Lippincott  &  Co.] 

6.  Essays  and  Bagatelles.     Vol.  ii.  of  Franklin's 
Works.     Edited  by  David  Sparks.     Boston:   1836. 

7.  Moses  Coit  Tyler.      A  History  of  American 
Literature.     1607-1765.      New  York:   1878.     [G- 
P.  Putnam's  Sons.] 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  51 


CHAPTER  II. 
THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD. 

1765-1815. 

IT  will  be  convenient  to  treat  the  fifty  years 
which  elapsed  between  the  meeting  at  New  York, 
in  1765,  of  a  Congress  of  delegates  from  nine  colo 
nies,  to  protest  against  the  Stamp  Act,  and  the 
close  of  the  second  war  with  England,  in  1815,  as, 
for  literary  purposes,  a  single  period.  This  half 
century  was  the  formative  era  of  the  American 
nation.  Historically  it  is  divisible  into  the  years 
of  revolution  and  the  years  of  construction.  But 
the  men  who  led  the  movement  for  independence 
were  also,  in  great  part,  the  same  who  guided  in 
shaping  the  Constitution  of  the  new  republic,  and 
the  intellectual  impress  of  the  whole  period  is  one 
and  the  same.  The  character  of  the  age  was  as 
distinctly  political  as  that  of  the  colonial  era — in 
New  England  at  least — was  theological;  and  liter 
ature  must  still  continue  to  borrow  its  interest  from 
history.  Pure  literature,  or  what,  for  want  of  a 
better  term  we  call  belles  lettrcs,  was  not  born  in 
America  until  the  nineteenth  century  was  well 
under  way.  It  is  true  that  the  Revolution  had  its 
humor,  its  poetry,  and  even  its  fiction  ;  but  these 


52  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

were  strictly  for  the  home  market.  They  hardly 
penetrated  the  consciousness  of  Europe  at  all,  and 
are  not  to  be  compared  with  the  contemporary 
work  of  English  authors  like  Cowper  and  Sheridan 
and  Burke.  Their  importance  for  us  to-day  is 
rather  antiquarian  than  literary,  though  the  most 
noteworthy  of  them  \\ill  be  mentioned  in  due 
course  in  the  present  chapter.  .  It  is  also  true  that 
one  or  two  of  Irving's  early  books  fall  within  the 
last  years  of  the  period  now  under  consideration. 
But  literary  epochs  overlap  one  another  at  the 
edges,  and  these  writings  may  best  be  postponed 
to  a  subsequent  chapter. 

Among  the  most  characteristic  products  of  the 
intellectual  stir  that  preceded  and  accompanied 
the  revolutionary  movement,  were  the  speeches  of 
political  orators  like  Samuel  Adams,  James  Otis, 
and  Josiah  Quincy  in  Massachusetts,  and  Patrick 
Henry  in  Virginia.  Oratory  is  the  art  of  a  free 
people,  and  as  in  the  forensic  assemblies  of  Greece 
and  Rome,  and  in  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain, 
so  in  the  conventions  and  congresses  of  revolution 
ary  America  it  sprang  up  and  flourished  naturally. 
The  age,  moreover,  was  an  eloquent,  not  to  say  a 
rhetorical  age;  and  the  influence  of  Johnson's  oro 
tund  prose,  of  the  declamatory  Letters  of  Junius, 
and  of  the  speeches  of  Burke,  Fox,  Sheridan,  and 
the  elder  Pitt  is  perceptible  in  the  debates  of  our 
early  congresses.  The  fame  of  a  great  orator,  like 
that  of  a  great  actor,  is  largely  traditionary.  The 
spoken  word  transferred  to  the  printed  page  loses 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  53 

the  glow  which  resided  in  the  man  and  the  mo 
ment.  A  speech  is  good  if  it  attains  its  aim,  if  it 
moves  the  hearers  to  the  end  which  is  sought. 
But  the  fact  that  this  end  is  often  temporary  and 
occasional,  rather  than  universal  and  permanent, 
explains  why  so  few  speeches  are  really  literature. 
If  this  is  true,  even  where  the  words  of  an  orator 
are  preserved  exactly  as  they  were  spoken,  it  is 
doubly  true  when  we  have  only  the  testimony  of 
contemporaries  as  to  the  effect  which  the  oration 
produced.  The  fiery  utterances  of  Adams,  Otis, 
and  Quincy  were  either  not  reported  at  all  or 
very  imperfectly  reported,  so  that  posterity  can 
judge  of  them  only  at  second  hand.  Patrick 
Henry  has  fared  better,  many  of  his  orations  being 
preserved  in  substance,  if  not  in  the  letter,  in  Wirt's 
biography.  Of  these  the  most  famous  was  the  de 
fiant  speech  in  the  Convention  of  Delegates,  March 
28,  1775,  throwing  down  the  gauge  of  battle  to  the 
British  ministry.  The  ringing  sentences  of  this 
challenge  nrj  still  declaimed  by  school  boys,  and 
many  of  them  remain  as  familiar  as  household 
words.  "  I  have  but  one  lamp  by  which  my  feet 
are  guided,  and  that  is  the  lamp  of  experience.  I 
know  of  no  way  of  judging  of  the  future  but  by 
the  past.  .  .  .  Gentlemen  may  cry  peace,  peace, 
but  there  is  no  peace.  ...  Is  life  so  dear,  or  peace 
so  sweet,  as  to  be  purchased  at  the  price  of  chains 
and  slavery!  Forbid  it,  Almighty  God'  I  know 
not  what  course  others  may  take,  but  as  for  me, 
give  me  liberty,  or  give  me  death !  "  The  eio- 


54  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

quence  of  Patrick  Henry  was  fervid  lather  than 
weighty  or  rich.  But  if  such  specimens  of  the 
oratory  of  the  American  patriots  as  have  come 
down  to  us  fail  to  account  for  the  wonderful  im 
pression  that  their  words  are  said  to  have  pro 
duced  upon  their  fellow-countrymen,  we  should 
remember  that  they  are  at  a  disadvantage  when 
read  instead  of  heard.  The  imagination  should 
supply  all  those  accessories  which  gave  them  vital 
ity  when  first  pronounced :  the  living  presence 
and  voice  of  the  speaker;  the  listening  Senate;  the 
grave  excitement  of  the  hour  and  of  the  impend 
ing  conflict.  The  wordiness  and  exaggeration;  the 
highly  latinized  diction  ;  the  rhapsodies  about 
freedom  which  hundreds  of  Fourth-of-July  ad 
dresses  have  since  turned  into  platitudes — all  these 
coming  hot  from  the  lips  of  men  whose  actions  in 
the  field  confirmed  the  earnestness  of  their  speech 
— were  effective  enough  in  the  crisis  and  for  the 
purpose  to  which  they  were  addressed. 

The  press  was  an  agent  in  the  cause  of  liberty 
no  less  potent  than  the  platform,  and  patriots 
such  as  Adams,  Otis,  Quincy,  Warren,  and  Han 
cock  wrote  constantly  for  the  newspapers  essays 
and  letters  on  the  public  questions  of  the  time 
signed  "Vindex,"  ''Hyperion,"  "Independent," 
4<  Brutus,"  "Cassias,"  and  the  like,  and  couched  in 
language  which  to  the  taste  of  to-day  seems  rather 
over  rhetorical.  Among  the  most  important  of 
these  political  essays  were  the  Circular  Letter  to 
each  Colonial  Legislature,  published  by  Adams 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PF.RIOD.  55 

and  Otis  in  1768;  Quincy's  Observations  on  the 
Boston  Port  Bill,  1774,  and  Otis's  Rights  of  the 
British  Colonies,  a  pamphlet  of  one  hundred  and 
twenty  pages,  printed  in  1764.  No  collection  of 
Otis's  writings  has  ever  been  made.  The  life  of 
Quincy,  published  by  his  son,  preserves  for  pos 
terity  his  journals  and  correspondence,  his  news 
paper  essays,  and  his  speeches  at  the  bar,  taken 
from  the  Massachusetts  law  reports. 

Among  the  political  literature  which  is  of  peren 
nial  interest  to  the  American  people  are  such 
State  documents  as  the  Declaration  of  Indepen 
dence,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and 
the  messages,  inaugural  addresses,  and  other  writ 
ings  of  our  early  presidents.  Thomas  Jefferson, 
the  third  president  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
father  of  the  Democratic  party,  was  the  author  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  whose  opening 
sentences  have  become  commonplaces  in  the  mem 
ory  of  all  readers.  One  sentence  in  particular  has 
been  as  a  shibboleth,  or  war-cry,  or  declaration  of 
faith  among  Democrats  of  all  shades  of  opinion : 
"We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident:  that  all 
men  are  created  equal  ;  that  they  are  endowed  by 
their  Creator  with  certain  unalienable  rights;  that 
among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness."  Not  so  familiar  to  modern  readers  is 
the  following,  which  an  English  historian  of  our 
literature  calls  "the  most  eloquent  clause  of  that 
great  document,"  and  "the  most  interesting  sup 
pressed  passage  in  American  literature."  Jefferson 


56  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

was  a  southerner,  but  even  at  that  early  day  the 
South  had  grown  sensitive  on  the  subject  of  sla 
very,  and  Jefferson's  arraignment  of  King  George 
for  promoting  the  "peculiar  institution"  was  left 
out  from  the  final  draft  of  the  Declaration  in  def 
erence  to -southern  members. 

"  He  has  waged  cruel  war  against  human  nature 
itself,  violating  its  most  sacred  rights  of  life  and 
liberty,  in  the  persons  of  a  distant  people  who 
never  offended  him,  captivating  and  carrying  them 
into  slavery  in  another  hemisphere,  or  to  incur 
miserable  death  in  their  transportation  thither. 
This  piratical  warfare,  the  opprobrium  of  infidel 
powers,  is  the  warfare  of  the  Christian  king  of 
Great  Britain.  Determined  to  keep  open  a  mar 
ket  where  men  should  be  bought  and  sold,  he 
has  prostituted  his  negative  by  suppressing  every 
legislative  attempt  to  restrain  this  execrable  com 
merce.  And,  that  this  assemblage  of  horrors 
might  want  no  fact  of  distinguished  dye,  he  is 
now  exciting  those  very  people  to  rise  in  arms 
against  us,  and  purchase  that  liberty  of  which  he 
deprived  them  by  murdering  the  people  upon 
whom  he  obtruded  them,  and  thus  paying  off 
former  crimes  committed  against  the  liberties  of 
one  people  by  crimes  which  he  urges  them  to 
commit  against  the  lives  of  another." 

The  tone  of  apology  or  defense  which  Calhoun 
and  other  southern  statesmen  afterward  adopted 
on  the  subject  of  slavery  was  not  taken  by  the 
men  of  Jefferson's  generation.  Another  famous 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  57 

Virginian,  John  Randolph  of  Roanoke,  himself  a 
slaveholder,  in  his  speech  on  the  militia  bill  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  December  10,  iSn, 
said  :  "  I  speak  from  facts  when  I  say  that  the 
night-bell  never  tolls  for  fire  in  Richmond  that 
the  mother  does  not  hug  her  infant  more  closely 
to  her  bosom."  This  was  said  apropos  of  the 
danger  of  a  servile  insurrection  in  the  event  of  a 
war  with  England — a  war  which  actually  broke  out 
in  the  year  following,  but  was  not  attended  with 
the  slave  rising  which  Randolph  predicted.  Ran 
dolph  was  a  thorough-going  "  States  rights  "  man, 
and  though  opposed  to  slavery  on  principle,  he 
cried  hands  off  to  any  interference  by  the  General 
Government  with  the  domestic  institutions  of  the 
States.  His  speeches  read  better  than  most  of  his 
contemporaries'.  They  are  interesting  in  their  ex 
hibit  of  a  bitter  and  eccentric  individuality,  witty, 
incisive,  and  expressed  in  a  pungent  and  familiar 
style  which  contrasts  refreshingly  with  the  diplo 
matic  language  an4  glittering  generalities  of  most 
congressional  oratory,  whose  verbiage  seems  to 
keep  its  subject  always  at  arm's  length. 

Another  noteworthy  writing  of  Jefferson's  was 
his  Inaugural  Address  of  March  4,  1801,  with  its 
programme  of  "equal  and  exact  justice  to  all  men, 
of  whatever  state  or  persuasion,  religious  or  po 
litical  ;  peace,  commerce,  and  honest  friendship 
with  all  nations,  entangling  alliances  with  none  ; 
the  support  of  the  State  governments  in  all  their 
rights;  .  .  .  absolute  acquiescence  in  the  decisions 


58  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

of  the  majority;  .  .  .  the  supremacy  of  the  civil 
over  the  military  authority  ;  economy  in  the  pub 
lic  expense  ;  freedom  of  religion,  freedom  of  the 
press,  and  freedom  of  person  under  the  protection 
of  the  habeas  corpus,  and  trial  by  juries  impartially 
selected." 

During  his  six  years'  residence  in  France,  as 
American  Minister,  Jefferson  had  become  indoc 
trinated  with  the  principles  of  French  democracy. 
His  main  service  and  that  of  his  party — the  Dem- 
bcratic  or,  as  it  was  then  called,  the  Republican 
party — to  the  young  republic  was  in  its  insistence 
upon  toleration  of  all  beliefs  and  upon  the  freedom 
of  the  individual  from  all  forms  of  governmental 
restraint.  Jefferson  has  some  claims  to  rank  as  an 
author  in  general  literature.  Educated  at  William 
and  Mary  College  in  the  old  Virginia  capital, 
Williamsburg,  he  became  the  founder  of  the  Uni 
versity  of  Virginia,  in  which  he  made  special  pro 
vision  for  the  study  of  Anglo-Saxon,  and  in  which 
the  liberal  scheme  of  instruction  and  discipline 
was  conformed,  in  theory  at  least,  to  tn"e  "univer 
sity  idea."  His  Notes  on  Virginia  are  not  without 
literary  quail ity,  and  one  description,  in  particular, 
has  been  often  quoted— the  passage  of  the  Poto 
mac  through  the  Blue  Ridge — in  which  is  this 
poetically  imaginative  touch  :  '  The  mountain 
being  cloven  "asunder,  she  presents  to  your  eye, 
through  the  cleft,  a  small  catch  of  smooth  blue 
horizon,  at  an  infinite  distance  in  the  plain  coun 
try,  inviting  you,  as  it  were,  from  the  riot  and 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  59 

tumult  roaring  around,  to  pass  through  the  breach 
and  participate  of  the  calm  below." 

After  the  conclusion  of  peace  with  England,  in 
1783,  political  discussion  centered  about  the  Con 
stitution,  which  in  1788  took  the  place  of  the  looser 
Articles  of  Confederation  adopted  in  1778.  The 
Constitution  as  finally  ratified  was  a  compromise 
between  two  parties — the  Federalists,  who  wanted 
a  strong  central  government,  and  the  Anti-Fed 
erals  (afterward  called  Republicans,  or  Democrats), 
who  wished  to  preserve  State  sovereignty.  The 
debates  on  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  both 
in  the  General  Convention  of  the  States,  which  met 
at  Philadelphia  in  1787,  and  in  the  separate  State 
Conventions  called  to  ratify  its  action,  form  a 
valuable  body  of  comment  and  illustration  upon 
the  instrument  itself.  One  of  the  most  notable  of 
the  speeches  in  opposition  was  Patrick  Henry's 
address  before  the  Virginia  Convention.  "  That 
this  is  a  consolidated  government,"  he  said,  "  is 
demonstrably  clear ;  and  the  danger  of  such  a 
government  is,  to  my  mind,  very  striking."  The 
leader  of  the  Federal  party  was  Alexander  Ham 
ilton,  the  ablest  constructive  intellect  among  the 
statesmen  of  our  revolutionary  era,  of  whom  Tal 
leyrand  said  that  he  "had  never  known  his  equal;" 
whom  Guizot  classed  with  "  the  men  who  have 
best  known  the  vital  principles  and  fundamental 
conditions  of  a  government  worthy  of  its  name  and 
mission."  Hamilton's  speech  On  the  Expediency 
of  Adopting  the  Federal  Constitution,  delivered  in 


60  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  Convention  of  New  York,  June  24,  1788,  was 
a  masterly  statement  of  the  necessity  and  advan 
tages  of  the  Union.  But  the  most  complete  ex 
position  of  the  constitutional  philosophy  of  the 
Federal  party  was  the  series  of  eighty-five  papers 
entitled  the  Federalist,  printed  during  the  years 
1787-88,  and  mostly  in  the  Independent  Journal 
of  New  York,  over  the  signature  "PuMsus"  These 
were  the  work  of  Hamilton,  of  John  Jay,  after 
ward  Chief  Justice,  and  of  James  Madison,  after 
ward  President  of  the  United  States.  The  Feder 
alist  papers,  though  written  in  a  somewhat  pon 
derous  diction,  are  among  the  great  landmarks  of 
American  history,  and  were  in  themselves  a  polit 
ical  education  to  the  generation  that  read  them. 
Hamilton  was  a  brilliant  and  versatile  figure,  a 
persuasive  orator,  a  forcible  writer,  and  as  Secre 
tary  of  the  Treasury  under  Washington  the  fore.- 
most  of  American  financiers.  He  was  killed,  in  a 
duel,  by  Aaron  Burr,  at  Hoboken,  in  1804. 

The  Federalists  were  victorious,  and  under  the 
provisions  of  the  new  Constitution  George  Wash 
ington  was  inaugurated  first  President  of  the 
United  States,  on  March  4,  1789.  Washington's 
writings  have  been  collected  by  Jared  Sparks. 
They  consist  of  journals,  letters,  messages,  ad 
dresses,  and  public  documents,  for  the  most  part 
plain  and  business-like  in  manner,  and  without  any 
literary  pretensions.  The  most  elaborate  and  the 
best  known  of  them  is  his  Farewell  Address,  issued 
on  his  retirement  from  the  presidency  in  1796.  In 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  6r 

the  composition  of  this  he  was  assisted  by  Madi 
son,  Hamilton,  and  Jay.  It  is  wise  in  substance 
and  dignified,  though  somewhat  stilted  in  expres 
sion.  The  correspondence  of  John  Adams,  second 
President  of  ths  United  States,  and  his  diary,  kept 
from  1755-85,  should  also  be  mentioned  as  im 
portant  sources  for  a  full  knowledge  of  this  period. 
In  the  long  life -and -death  struggle  of  Great 
Britain  against  the  French  Republic  and  its  suc 
cessor,  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  the  Federalist  party  in 
this  country  naturally  sympathized  with  England, 
and  the  Jeffersonian  Democracy  with  France. 
The  Federalists,  who  distrusted  the  sweeping  ab 
stractions  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  clung  to 
the  conservative  notions  of  a  checked  and  balanced 
freedom,  inherited  from  English  precedent,  were  ac 
cused  of  monarchical  and  aristocratic  leanings.  On 
their  side  they  were  not  slow  to  accuse  their  adver 
saries  of  French  atheism  and  French  Jacobinism. 
By  a  singular  reversal  of  the  natural  order  of  things 
the  strength  of  the  Federalist  party  was  in  New 
England,  which  was  socially  democratic,  while  the 
strength  of  the  Jeffersonians  was  in  the  South, 
whose  social  structure  —  owing  to  the  system  of 
slavery  —  was  intensely  aristocratic.  The  war  of 
1812  with  England  was  so  unpopular  in  New  En 
gland,  by  reason  of  the  injury  which  it  threatened 
to  inflict  on  its  commerce,  that  the  Hartford  Con 
vention  of  1814  was  more  than  suspected  of  a  de 
sign  to  bring  about  the  secession  of  New  England 
from  the  Union.  A  good  deal  of  oratory  was  called 


62  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

out  by  the  debates  on  the  commercial  treaty  with 
Great  Britain,  negotiated  by  Jay  in  1795,  by  the 
Alien  and  Sedition  Law  of  1798,  and  by  other 
pieces  of  Federalist  legislation,  previous  to  the 
downfall  of  that  party  and  the  election  of  Jefferson 
to  the  presidency  in  1800.  The  best  of  the  Fed 
eralist  orators  during  those  years  was  Fisher  Ames, 
of  Massachusetts,  and  the  best  of  his  orations  was, 
perhaps,  his  speech  on  the  British  treaty  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  April  18,  1796.  The 
speech  was,  in  great  measure,  a  protest  against 
American  chauvinism  and  the  violation  of  inter 
national  obligations.  "It  has  been  said  the  world 
ought  to  rejoice  if  Britain  was  sunk  in  the  sea  ;  if 
where  there  are  now  men  and  wealth  and  laws  and 
liberty,  there  was  no  more  than  a  sand  bank  for 
sea-monsters  to  fatten  on;  space  for  the  storms  of 
the  ocean  to  mingle  in  conflict.  .  .  .  What  is  patri 
otism  ?  Is  it  a  narrow  affection  for  the  spot  where 
a  man  was  born  ?  Are  the  very  clods  where  we 
tread  entitled  to  this  ardent  preference  because 
they  are  greener?  ...  I  see  no  exception  to  the 
respect  that  is  paid  among  nations  to  the  law  of 
good  faith.  ...  It  is  observed  by  barbarians — a 
whiff  of  tobacco  smoke  or  a  string  of  beads  gives 
not  merely  binding  force  but  sanctity  to  treaties. 
Even  in  Algiers  a  truce  may  be  bought  for  money, 
but,  when  ratified,  even  Algiers  is  too  wise  or  too 
just  to  disown  and  annul  its  obligation."  Ames 
was  a  scholar,  and  his  speeches  are  more  finished 
and  thoughtful,  more  literary,  in  a  way,  than  those 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  63 

of  his  contemporaries.  His  eulogiums  on  Wash 
ington  and  Hamilton  are  elaborate  tributes,  rather 
excessive,  perhaps,  in  laudation  and  in  classical 
allusions.  In  all  the  oratory  of  the  revolutionary 
period  there  is  nothing  equal  in  deep  and  con 
densed  energy  of  feeling  to  the  single  clause  in  Lin 
coln's  Gettysburg  Address,  "  that  we  here  highly 
resolve  that  these  dead  shall  not  have  died  in  vain." 
A  prominent  figure  during  and  after  the  War  of 
the  Revolution  was  Thomas  Paine,  or,  as  he  was 
somewhat  disrespectfully  called,  "  Tom  Paine." 
He  was  a  dissenting  minister  who,  conceiving 
himself  ill  treated  by  the  British  Government, 
came  to  Philadelphia  in  1774  and  threw  himself 
heart  and  soul  into  the  colonial  cause.  His 
pamphlet,  Common  Sense,  issued  in  1776,  began 
with  the  famous  words  :  "  These  are  the  times  that 
try  men's  souls."  This  was  followed  by  the 
Crisis,  a  series  of  political  essays  advocating  inde 
pendence  and  the  establishment  of  a  republic, 
published  in  periodical  form,  though  at  irregular 
intervals.  Paine's  rough  and  vigorous  advocacy 
was  of  great  service  to  the  American  patriots. 
His  writings  were  popular  and  his  arguments  were 
of  a  kind  easily  understood  by  plain  people,  ad 
dressing  themselves  to  the  common  sense,  the 
prejudices  and  passions  of  unlettered  readers. 
He  afterward  went  to  France  and  took  an  active 
part  in  the.  popular  movement  there,  crossing 
swords  with  Burke  in  his  Rights  of  Man,  1791-92, 
written  in  defense  of  the  French  Revolution.  He 


64  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

was  one  of  the  two  foreigners  who  sat  in  the  Con 
vention  ;  but  falling  under  suspicion  during  the 
days  of  the  terror,  he  was  committed  to  the  prison 
of  the  Luxembourg  and  only  released  upon  the  fall 
of  Robespierre  July  27,  1794.  While  in  prison  he 
wrote  a  portion  of  his  best  known  work,  the  Age 
of  Reason.  This  appeared  in  two  parts  in  1794 
and  1795,  tne  manuscript  of  the  first  part  having 
been  intrusted  to  Joel  Barlow,  the  American  poet, 
who  happened  to  be  in  Paris  when  Paine  was  sent 
to  prison. 

The  Age  of  Reason  damaged  Paine's  reputation 
in  America,  where  the  name  of  *'  Tom  Paine  " 
became  a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  the  godly  and 
a  synonym  for  atheism  and  blasphemy.  His  book 
was  denounced  from  a  hundred  pulpits,  and  copies 
of  it  were  carefully  locked  away  from  the  sight  of 
"  the  young,"  whose  religious  beliefs  it  might  under 
mine.  It  was,  in  effect,  a  crude  and  popular  state 
ment  of  the  Deistic  argument  against  Christianity. 
What  the  cutting  logic  and  persiflage — the  sourire 
hideux — of  Voltaire  had  done  in  France,  Paine, 
with  coarser  materials,  essayed  to  do  for  the  English- 
speaking  populations.  Deism  was  in  the  air  of 
the  time ;  Franklin,  Jefferson,  Ethan  Allen,  Joel 
Barlow,  and  other  prominent  Americans  were 
openly  or  unavowedly  deistic.  Free  thought, 
somehow,  went  along  with  democratic  opinions, 
and  was  a  part  of  the  liberal  movement  of  the  age. 
Paine  was  a  man  without  reverence,  imagination, 
or  religious  feeling.  He  was  no  scholar,  and  he  was 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  65 

not  troubled  by  any  perception  of  the  deeper  and 
subtler  aspects  of  the  questions  which  he  touched. 
In  his  examination  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa 
ments,  he  insisted  that  the  Bible  was  an  imposi 
tion  and  a  forgery,  full  of  lies,  absurdities,  and  ob 
scenities.  Supernatural  Christianity,  with  all  its 
mysteries  and  miracles,  was  a  fraud  practiced  by 
priests  upon  the  people,  and  churches  were  instru 
ments  of  oppression  in  the  hands  of  tyrants.  This 
way  of  accounting  for  Christianity  would  not  now 
be  accepted  by  even  the  most  "advanced"  think 
ers.  The  contest  between  skepticism  and  revela 
tion  has  long  since  shifted  to  other  grounds.  Both 
the  philosophy  and  the  temper  of  the  Age  of  Reason 
belong  to  the  eighteenth  century.  But  Paine's 
downright  pugnacious  method  of  attack  was  ef 
fective  with  shrewd,  half-educated  doubters,  and 
in  America  well-thumbed  copies  of  his  book 
passed  from  hand  to  hand  in  many  a  rural  tavern 
or  store,  where  the  village  atheist  wrestled  in 
debate  with  the  deacon  or  the  school-master. 
"When  one  part  of  God,"  exclaims  Paine — to  give 
an  instance  of  the  method  and  spirit  of  his  book — 
"  is  represented  as  a  dying  man,  and  another  part 
called  the  Holy  Ghost,  by  a  flying  pigeon,  it  is 
impossible  that  belief  can  attach  itself  to  such 
wild  conceits.  The  book  called  the  Book  of  Mat 
thew  says  that  the  Holy  Ghost  descended  in  the 
shape  of  a  dove.  It  might  as  well  have  said  a 
goose ;  the  creatures  are  equally  harmless,  and 
the  one  is  as  much  a  nonsensical  lie  as  the  other." 
5  ' 


66  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

And  again:  "What  is  it  the  Testament  teaches 
us? — to  believe  that  the  Almighty  committed  de 
bauchery  with  a  woman  engaged  to  be  married ! 
And  the  belief  of  this  debauchery  is  called  faith." 
When  we  turn  from  the  political  and  contro 
versial  writings  of  the  Revolution  to  such  lighter 
literature  as  existed,  we  find  little  that  would  de 
serve  mention  in  a  more  crowded  period.  The 
few  things  in  this  kind  that  have  kept  afloat  on  the 
current  of  time — rari  nantes  in  gurgite  vasto — at 
tract  attention  rather  by  reason  of  their  fewness 
than  of  any  special  excellence  that  they  have. 
During  the  eighteenth  century  American  literature 
continued  to  accommodate  itself  to  changes  of 
taste  in  the  old  country.  The  so-called  classical 
or  Augustan  writers  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne 
replaced  other  models  of  style  :  the  Spectator  set 
the  fashion  of  almost  all  of  our  lighter  prose,  from 
Franklin's  Busybody  down  to  the  time  of  Irving, 
who  perpetuated  the  Addisonian  tradition  later 
than  any  English  writer.  The  influence  of  Locke, 
of  Dr.  Johnson,  and  of  the  Parliamentary  orators 
has  already  been  mentioned.  In  poetry  the  ex 
ample  of  Pope  was  dominant,  so  that  we  find,  for 
example,  William  Livingston,  who  became  gov 
ernor  of  New  Jersey  and  a  member  of  the  Con 
tinental  Congress,  writing  in  1747  a  poem  on  Philos 
ophic  Solitude  which  reproduces  the  trick  of  Pope's 
antitheses  and  climaxes  with  the  imagery  of  the 
Rape  of  the  Lock,  and  the  didactic  morality  of  the 
Imitations  from  Horace  and  the  Moral  Essays'. 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  67 

"  Let  ardent  heroes  seek  renown  in  arms, 
Pant  after  fame  and  rush  to  war's  alarms  ; 
To  shining  palaces  let  fools  resort 
And  dunces  cringe  to  be  esteemed  at  court. 
Mine  be  the  pleasure  of  a  rural  life, 
From  noise  remote  and  ignorant  of  strife, 
Far  from  the  painted  belle  and  white-gloved  beau, 
The  lawless  masquerade  and  midnight  show  ; 
From  ladies,  lap-dogs,  courtiers,  garters,  stars, 
Fops,  fiddlers,  tyrants,  emperors,  and  czars." 


The  most  popular  poem  of  the  Revolutionary 
period  was  John  Trumbull's  McFingal^  published 
in  part  at  Philadelphia  in  1775,  and  in  complete 
shape  at  Hartford  in  1782.  It  went  through  more 
than  thirty  editions  in  America,  and  was  several 
times  reprinted  in  England.  McFingal  was  a 
satire  in  four  cantos,  directed  against  the  Amer 
ican  Loyalists,  and  modeled  quite  closely  upon 
Butler's  mock  heroic  poem,  Hudibras.  As  Butler's 
hero  sallies  forth  to  put  down  May  games  and 
bear-baitings,  so  the  tory  McFingal  goes  out 
against  the  liberty-poles  and  bon-fires  of  the 
patriots,  but  is  tarred  and  feathered,  and  other 
wise  ill  entreated,  and  finally  takes  refuge  in  the 
camp  of  General  Gage  at  Boston.  The  poem  is 
written  with  smartness  and  vivacity,  attains  often 
to  drollery  and  sometimes  to  genuine  humor.  It 
remains  one  of  the  best  of  American  political 
satires,  and  unquestionably  the  most  successful  of 
the  many  imitations  of  Hudibras,  whose  manner  it 
follows  so  closely  that  some  of  its  lines,  which 


68  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

have  passed   into  currency  as  proverbs,  are   gen 
erally  attribued  to  Butler.     For  example  : 

"  No  man  e'er  felt  the  halter  draw 
With  good  opinion  of  the  law." 

Or  this: 

"  For  any  man  with  half  an  eye 
What  stands  before  him  may  espy  ; 
But  optics  sharp  it  needs,  I  ween, 
To  see  what  is  not  to  be  seen." 

Trumbull's  wit  did  not  spare  the  vulnerable 
points  of  his  own  countrymen,  as  in  his  sharp  skit 
at  slavery  in  the  couplet  about  the  newly  adopted 
flag  of  the  Confederation  : 

"  Inscribed  with  inconsistent  types 
Of  Liberty  and  thirteen  stripes." 

Trumbull  was  one  of  a  group  of  Connecticut 
literati,  who  made  much  noise  in  their  time  as  the 
"Hartford  Wits."  The  other  members  of  the 
group  were  Lemuel  Hopkins,  David  Humphreys, 
Joel  Barlow,  Elihu  Smith,  Theodore  Dwight,  and 
Richard  Alsop.  Trumbull,  Humphreys,  and  Bar 
low  had  formed  a  friendship  and  a  kind  of  literary 
partnership  at  Yale,  where  they  were  contempo 
raries  of  each  other  and  of  Timothy  Dwight. 
During  the  war  they  served  in  the  army  in  various 
capacities,  and  at  its  close  they  found  themselves 
again  together  for  a  few  years  at  Hartford,  where 
they  formed  a  club  that  met  weekly  for  social  and 
literary  purposes.  Their  presence  lent  a  sort  of 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  69 

eclat  to  the  little  provincial  capital,  and  their  writ 
ings  made  it  for  a  time  an  intellectual  center  quite 
as  important  as  Boston  or  Philadelphia  or  New 
York.  The  Hartford  Wits  were  staunch  Federal 
ists,  and  used  their  pens  freely  in  support  of  the 
administrations  of  Washington  and  Adams,  and  in 
ridicule  of  Jefferson  and  the  Democrats.  In 
1786-87  Trumbull,  Hopkins,  Barlow,  and  Hum 
phreys  published  in  the  New  Haven  Gazette  a 
series  of  satirical  papers  entitled  the  Anarchiadi 
suggested  by  the  English  Rolliad^  and  purporting 
to  be  extracts  from  an  ancient  epic  on  "  the 
Restoration  of  Chaos  and  Substantial  Night." 
These  papers  were  an  effort  to  correct,  by  ridicule, 
the  anarchic  condition  of  things  which  preceded 
the  adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution  in  1789. 
It  was  a  time  of  great  confusion  and  discontent, 
when,  in  parts  of  the  country,  Democratic  mobs 
were  protesting  against  the  vote  of  five  years'  pay 
by  the  Continental  Congress  to  the  officers  of  the 
American  army.  The  Anarchiad  was  followed  by 
the  Echo  and  the  Political  Green  House,  written 
mostly  by  Alsop  and  Theodore  Dwight,  and  similar 
in  character  and  tendency  to  the  earlier  series. 
Time  has  greatly  blunted  the  edge  of  these  satires, 
but  they  were  influential  in  their  day,  and  are  an 
important  part  of  the  literature  of  the  old  Federal 
ist  party. 

Humphreys  became  afterward  distinguished  in 
the  diplomatic  service,  and  was,  successively, 
etnbassador  to  Portugal  and  to  Spain,  whence  he 


/o  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

introduced  into  America  the  breed  of  merino 
sheep.  He  had  been  on  Washington's  staff 
during  the  war,  and  was  several  times  an  inmate 
of  his  house  at  Mount  Vernon,  where  he  pro 
duced,  in  1785,  the  best  known  of  his  writings, 
Mount  Vernon,  an  ode  of  a  rather  mild  descrip 
tion^  which  once  had  admirers.  Joel  Barlow  cuts 
a  larger  figure  in  contemporary  letters.  After 
leaving  Hartford,  in  1788.  he  went  to  France, 
where  he  resided  for  seventeen  years,  made  a 
fortune  in  speculations,  and  became  imbued  with 
French  principles,  writing  a  song  in  praise  of  the 
Guillotine,  which  gave  great  scandal  to  his  old 
friends  at  home.  In  1805  he  returned  to  America, 
and  built  a  fine  residence  near  Washington,  which 
he  called  Kalorama.  Barlow's  literary  fame,  in 
his  own  generation,  rested  upon  his  prodigious 
epic,  the  Columbiad.  The  first  form  of  this  was 
the  Vision  of  Columbus,  published  at  Hartford  in 
1787.  This  he  afterward  recast  and  enlarged  into 
the  Columbiad,  issued  in  Philadelphia  in  1807, 
and  dedicated  to  Robert  Fulton,  the  inventor 
of  the  steamboat.  This  was  by  far  the  most 
sumptuous  piece  of  book- making  that  had  then 
been  published  in  America,  and  was  embel 
lished  with  plates  executed  by  the  best  London 
engravers. 

The  Columbiad  was  a  grandiose  performance, 
and  has  been  the  theme  of  much  ridicule  by  later 
writers.  Hawthorne  suggested  its  being  drama 
tized,  and  put  on  to  the  accompaniment  of  artillery 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  71 

and  thunder  and  lightning ;  and  E.  P.  Whipple 
declared  that  "no  critic  in  the  last  fifty  years  had 
read  more  than  a  hundred  lines  of  it."  In  its  am- 
bitiousness  and  its  length  it  was  symptomatic  of  the 
spirit  of  the  age  which  was  patriotically  determined 
to  create,  by  tour  de  force,  a  national  literature  of 
a  size  commensurate  with  the  scale  of  American 
nature  and  the  destinies  of  the  republic.  As  Amer 
ica  was  bigger  than  Argos  and  Troy,  we  ought  to 
have  a  bigger  epic  than  the  Iliad.  Accordingly, 
Barlow  makes  Hesper  fetch  Columbus  from  his 
prison  to  a  "hill  of  vision,"  where  he  unrolls  before 
his  eye  a  panorama  of  the  history  of  America,  or, 
as  our  bards  then  preferred  to  call  it,  Columbia. 
He  shows  him  the  conquest  of  Mexico  by  Cortez; 
the  rise  and  fall  of  the  kingdom  of  the  Incas  in 
Peru  ;  the  settlements  of  the  English  Colonies  in 
North  America  ;  the  old  French  and  Indian  Wars  ; 
the  Revolution,  ending  with  a  prophecy  of  the  fu 
ture  greatness  of  the  new-born  nation.  The  machin 
ery  of  the  Vision  was  borrowed  from  the  nth  and 
1 2th  books  of  Paradise  Lost.  Barlow's  verse  was  the 
ten-syllabled  rhyming  couplet  of  Pope,  and  his  po 
etic  style  was  distinguished  by  the  vague,  glittering 
imagery  and  the  false  sublimity  which  marked  the 
epic  attempts  of  the  Queen  Anne  poets.  Though 
Barlow  was  but  a  masquerader  in  true  heroic,  he 
showed  himself  a  true  poet  in  mock  heroic.  His 
Hasty  Pudding,  written  in  Savoy  in  1793,  and  dedi 
cated  to  Mrs.  Washington,  was  thoroughly  Amer 
ican,  in  subject  at  least,  and  its  humor,  though 


72  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

over-elaborate,  is  good.     One  couplet  in  particular 
has  prevailed  against  oblivion  : 

"  E'en  in  thy  native  regions  how  I  blush 

To  hear  the  Pennsylvaniaus  call  thee  Mush  !  " 

Another  Connecticut  poet — one  of  the  seven  who 
were  fondly  named  "The  Pleiads  of  Connecticut" 
-  was  Timothy  D  wight,  whose  Conquest  of  Canaan, 
written  shortly  after  his  graduation  from  college, 
but  not  published  till  1785,  was,  like  the  Columbiad, 
an  experiment  toward  the  domestication  of  the 
epic  muse  in  America.  It  was  written  like  Bar 
low's  poem,  in  rhymed  couplets,  and  the  patriotic 
impulse  of  the  time  shows  oddly  in  the  introduc 
tion  of  our  Revolutionary  War,  by  way  of  episode, 
among  the  wars  of  Israel.  Greenfield  Hill,  1794, 
was  an  idyllic  and  moralizing  poem,  descriptive  of 
a  rural  parish  in  Connecticut  of  which  the  author 
was  for  a  time  the  pastor.  It  is  not  quite  without 
merit;  shows  plainly  the  influence  of  Goldsmith, 
Thomson,  and  Beattie,  but  as  a  whole  is  tedious 
and  tame.  Byron  was  amused  that  there  should 
have  been  an  American  poet  christened  Timothy, 
and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  amusement  would  have 
been  the  chief  emotion  kindled  in  the  breast  of  the 
wicked  Voltaire  had  he  ever  chanced  to  see  the 
stern  dedication  to  himself  of  the  same  poet's  Tri 
umph  of  Infidelity,  1788.  Much  more  important 
than  Dwight's  poetry  was  his  able  Theology  Ex 
plained  and  Defended,  1794,  a  restatement,  with 
modifications,  of  the  Calvinism  of  Jonathan  Ed- 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  73 

wards,  which  was  accepted  by  the  Congregational 
churches  of  New  England  as  an  authoritative  ex 
ponent  of  the  orthodoxy  of  the  time.  His  Travels 
in  New  England  and  New  York,  including  descrip 
tions  of  Niagara,  the  White  Mountains,  Lake 
George,  the  Catskills,  and  other  passages  of  nat 
ural  scenery,  not  so  familiar  then  as  now,  was 
published  posthumously  in  1821,  was  praised  by 
Southey,  and  is  still  readable.  As  President  of 
Yale  College  from  1795  to  1817,  Dwight,  by  his 
learning  and  ability,  his  sympathy  with  young 
men,  and  the  force  and  dignity  of  his  character, 
exerted  a  great  influence  in  the  community. 

The  strong  political  bias  of  the  time  drew  into 
its  vortex  most  of  the  miscellaneous  literature 
that  was  produced.  A  number  of  ballads,  serious 
and  comic,  Whig  and  Tory,  dealing  with  the  bat 
tles  and  other  incidents  of  the  long  war,  enjoyed 
a  wide  circulation  in  the  newspapers,  or  were 
hawked  about  in  printed  broadsides.  Most  of 
these  have  no  literary  merit,  and  are  now  mere 
antiquarian  curiosities.  A  favorite  piece  on  the 
Tory  side  was  the  Cow  Chase,  a  cleverish  parody 
on  Chevy  Chase,  written  by  the  gallant  and  unfor 
tunate  Major  Andre,  at  the  expense  of  "  Mad  "  An 
thony  Wayne.  The  national  song  Yankee  Doodle 
was  evolved  during  the  Revolution,  and,  as  is  the 
case  with  John  Brown's  Body  and  many  other  pop 
ular  melodies,  some  obscurity  hangs  about  its 
origin.  The  air  was  an  old  one,  and  the  words 
of  the  chorus  seem  to  have  been  adapted  or  cor- 


74  AMI.RICAX  LITERATURE. 

rupted  from  a  Dutch  song,  and  applied  in  derision 
to  the  Provincials  by  the  soldiers  of  the  British 
army  as  early  as  1755.  Like  many  another  nick 
name,  the  term  Yankee  Doodle  was  taken  up  by 
the  nicknamed  and  proudly  made  their  own.  The 

stanza, 

"  Yankee  Doodle  came  to  town,"  etc. , 

antedates  the  war ;  but  the  first  complete  set  of 
words  to  the  tune  was  the  Yankee  s  Return  from 
Camp,  which  is  apparently  of  the  year  1775.  The 
most  popular  humorous  ballad  on  the  Whig  side 
was  the  Battle  of  the  Kegs,  founded  on  a  laughable 
incident  of  the  campaign  at  Philadelphia.  This 
was  written  by  Francis  Hopkinson,  a  Philadel- 
phian,  and  one  of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence.  Hopkinson  has  some  title  to 
rank  as  one  of  the  earliest  American  humorists. 
Without  the  keen  wit  of  McFingal  some  of  his 
Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Occasional  Writings,  pub 
lished  in  1792,  have  more  geniality  and  heartiness 
than  Trumbull's  satire.  His  Letter  on  White 
washing  is  a  bit  of  domestic  humor  that  foretokens 
the  D anbury  Ncu>s  man,  and  his  Modern  Learn 
ing,  1784,  a  burlesque  on  college  examinations,  in 
which  a  salt-box  is  described  from  the  point  of 
view  of  metaphysics,  logic,  natural  philosophy, 
mathematics,  anatomy,  surgery  and  chemistry,  long 
kept  its  place  in  school-readers  and  other  collec 
tions.  His  son,  Joseph  Hopkinson,  wrote  the  song 
of  Hail  Columbia,  which  is  saved  from  insignifi 
cance  only  by  the  music  to  which  \t  was  married, 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD. 


75 


the  then  popular  air  of  "The  President's  March." 
The  words  were  written  in  1798,  on  the  eve  c*  a 
threatened  war  with  France,  and  at  a  time  when 
party  spirit  ran  high.  It  was  sung  nightly  by 
crowds  in  the  streets,  and  for  a  whole  season  by  a 
favorite  singer  at  the  theater;  for  by  this  time 
there  were  theaters  in  Philadelphia,  in  New  York, 
and  even  in  Puritanic.  Boston.  Much  better  than 
Hail  Columbia  was  the  Star  Spangled  Banner,  the 
words  of  which  were  composed  by  Francis  Scott 
Key,  a  Marylander,  during  the  bombardment  by 
the  British  of  Fort  McHenry,  near  Baltimore,  in 
1812.  More  pretentious  than  these  was  the  once 
celebrated  ode  of  Robert  Treat  Paine,  Jr.,  Adams 
and  Liberty,  recited  at  an  anniversary  of  the  Mas 
sachusetts  Charitable  Fire  Society.  The  sale  oi 
this  is  said  to  have  netted  its  author  over  $750,  but 
it  is,  notwithstanding,  a  very  wooden  performance. 
Paine  was  a  young  Harvard  graduate,  who  had 
married  an  actress  playing  at  the  old  Federal 
Street  Theater,  the  first  play-house  opened  in 
Boston,  in  1794.  His  name  was  originally  Thomas, 
but  this  was  changed  for  him  by  the  Massachu 
setts  Legislature,  because  he  did  not  wish  to  be 
confounded  with  the  author  of  the  Age  of  Reason. 
"  Dim  are  those  names  erstwhile  in  battle  loud," 
And  many  an  old  Revolutionary  worthy  who  fought 
iOr  liberty  with  sword  and  pen  is  now  utterly  for 
gotten,  or  consigned  to  the  limbo  of  Duyckinck's 
Cyclopedia  and  Griswold's  Poets  of  America.  Here 
and  there  a  line  has,  by  accident,  survived  to  do 


76  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

duty  as  a  motto  or  inscription,  while  all  its  context 
is  buried  in  oblivion.  Few  have  read  any  thing 
more  of  Jonathan  M.  Sewall's,  for  example,  than 
the  couplet, 

"  No  pent-up  Utica  contracts  your  powers, 
But  the  whole  boundless  continent  is  yours," 

taken  from  his  Epilogue  to  Cato,  written  in  1778. 

Another  Revolutionary  poet  was  Philip  Fre- 
neau  ;  "  that  rascal  Freneau,"  as  Washington 
called  him,  when  annoyed  by  the  attacks  upon 
his  administration  in  Freneau's  National  Gazette. 
He  was  of  Huguenot  descent,  was  a  classmate  of 
Madison  at  Princeton  College,  was  taken  prisoner 
by  the  British  during  the  war,  and  when  the  war 
was  over,  engaged  in  journalism,  as  an  ardent  sup 
porter  of  Jefferson  and  the  Democrats.  Freneau's 
patriotic  verses  and  political  lampoons  are  now 
unreadable;  but  he  deserves  to  rank  as  the  first 
real  American  poet,  by  virtue  of  his  Wild  Honey 
suckle,  Indian  Burying  Ground,  Indian  Student, 
and  a  few  other  little  pieces,  which  exhibit  a  grace 
and  delicacy  inherited,  perhaps,  with  his  French 
blood. 

Indeed,  to  speak  strictly,  all  of  the  "poets" 
hitherto  mentioned  were  nothing  but  rhymers  • 
but  in  Freneau  we  meet  with  something  ot 
beauty  and  artistic  feeling;  something  which  still 
keeps  his  verses  fresh.  In  his  treatment  of  In 
dian  themes,  in  particular,  appear  for  the  first 
time  a  sense  of  the  picturesque  and  poetic 'ele- 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  77 

ments  in  the  character  and  wild  life  of  the  red 
man,  and  that  pensive  sentiment  which  the  fad 
ing  away  of  the  tribes  toward  the  sunset  has  left 
in  the  wake  of  their  retreating  footsteps.  In 
this  Freneau  anticipates  Cooper  and  Longfellow, 
though  his  work  is  slight  compared  with  the 
Leatherstocking  Tales  or  Hiawatha.  At  the  time 
when  the  Revolutionary  War  broke  out  the  popu 
lation  of  the  colonies  was  over  three  millions  ; 
Philadelphia  had  thirty  thousand  inhabitants,  and 
the  frontier  had  retired  to  a  comfortable  distance 
from  the  sea-board.  The  Indian  had  already 
grown  legendary  to  town  dwellers,  and  Freneau 
fetches  his  Indian  Student  not  from  the  outskirts 
of  the  settlement,  but  from  the  remote  backwoods 
of  the  State  : 

"  From  Susquehanna's  farthest  springs, 
Where  savage  tribes  pursue  their  game 

(His  blanket  tied  with  yellow  strings), 
A  shepherd  of  the  forest  came." 

Campbell  "  lifted  " — in  his  poem  O'Conor's  Child 
— the  last  line  of  the  following  stanza  from  Fre 
neau 's  Indian  Burying  Ground : 

"  By  midnight  moons,  o'er  moistening  dews, 

In  vestments  for  the  chase  arrayed. 
The  hunter  still  the  deer  pursues — 

The  hunter  and  the  deer  a  shade." 

And  Walter  Scott  did  Freneau  the  honor  to 
borrow,  in  Marmion,  the  final  line  of  one  of  the 


73  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

stanzas   of    his    poem    on    the    battle    of   Eutaw 
Springs: 

"They  saw  their  injured  country's  woe, 
The  flaming  town,  the  wasted  field  ; 
Then  rushed  to  meet  the  insulting  foe  ; 
They  took  the  spear,  but  left  the  shield." 

Scott  inquired  of  an  American  gentleman  who 
visited  him  the  authorship  of  this  poem,  which  he 
had  by  heart,  and  pronouced  it  as  fine  a  thing  of 
the  kind  as  there  was  in  the  language. 

The  American  drama  and  American  prose 
fiction  had  their  beginnings  during  the  period 
now  under  review.  A  company  of  English  play 
ers  came  to  this  country  in  1752  and  made  the 
tour  of  many  of  the  principal  towns.  The  first 
play  acted  here  by  professionals  on  a  public 
stage  was  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  which  was 
given  by  the  English  company  at  Williamsburg, 
Va.,  in  1752.  The  first  regular  theater  building 
was  at  Annapolis,  Md.,  where  in  the  same  year 
this  troupe  performed,  among  other  pieces,  Far- 
quhar's  Beaux'  Stratagem.  In  1753  a  theater  was 
built  in  New  York,  and  one  in  1759  in  Philadel 
phia.  The  Quakers  of  Philadelphia  and  the  Puri 
tans  of  Boston  were  strenuously  opposed  to  the 
acting  of  plays,  and  in  the  latter  city  the  players 
were  several  times  arrested  during  the  perform 
ances,  under  a  Massachusetts  law  forbidding  dra 
matic  performances.  At  Newport,  R.  I.,  on  the 
other  hand,  which  was  a  health  resort  for  planters 
from  the  Southern  States  and  the  West  Indies, 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  79 

and  the  largest  slave-market  in  the  North,  the 
actors  were  hospitably  received.  The  first  play 
known  to  have  been  written  by  an  American  was 
the  Prince  of  Parthia,  1765,  a  closet  drama,  by 
Thomas  Godfrey,  of  Philadelphia.  The  first  play 
by  an  American  writer,  acted  by  professionals  in 
a  public  theater,  was  Royal  Tyler's  Contrast,  per 
formed  in  New  York  in  1786.  The  former  of 
these  was  very  high  tragedy,  and  the  latter  very 
low  comedy;  and  neither  of  them  is  otherwise 
remarkable  than  as  being  the  first  of  a  long  line 
of  indifferent  dramas.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  Amer 
ican  dramatic  literature  worth  speaking  of;  not  a 
single  American  play  of  even  the  second  rank,  un 
less  we  except  a  few  graceful  parlor  comedies,  like 
Mr.  Ho  well's  Elevator  and  Sleeping-Car.  Royal 
Tyler,  the  author  of  the  Contrast,  cut  quite  a 
figure  in  his  day  as  a  wit  and  journalist,  and 
eventually  became  Chief  Justice  of  Vermont.  His 
comedy,  the  Georgia  Spec,  1797,  had  a  great  run 
in  Boston,  and  his  Algerine  Captive,  published  in 
the  same  year,  was  one  of  the  earliest  American 
novels.  It  was  a  rambling  tale  of  adventure,  con 
structed  somewhat  upon  the  plan  of  Smollett's 
novels  and  dealing  with  the  piracies  which  led  to 
the  war  between  the  United  States  and  Algiers 
in  1815. 

Charles    Brockden    Brown,    the    first   American  \ 
novelist  of  any  note,  was  also  the  first  professional 
man  of  letters  in  this  country  who  supported  him 
self  entirely  by  his  pen.     He  was  born  in   Phila- 


8o  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

delphia  in  1771,  lived  a  part  of  his  life  in  New 
York  and  part  in  his  native  city,  where  he  started, 
in  1803,  the  Literary  Magazine  and  American 
Register.  During  the  years  1798-1801  he  pub 
lished  in  rapid  succession  six  romances,  Wieland, 
Ormond,  Arthur  Mervyn,  Edgar  Huntley,  Clara 
Howard,  and  Jane  Talbot.  Brown  was  an  invalid 
and  something  of  a  recluse,  with  a  relish  for  the 
ghastly  in  incident  and  the  morbid  in  character. 
He  was  in  some  points  a  prophecy  of  Poe  and 
Hawthorne,  though  his  art  was  greatly  inferior  to 
Poe's,  and  almost  infinitely  so  to  Hawthorne's. 
His  books  belong  more  properly  to  the  contem 
porary  school  of  fiction  in  England  which  preceded 
the  "  Waverley  Novels  " — to  the  class  that  includes 
Beckford's  VatJiek,  Godwin's  Caleb  Williams  and 
St.  Leon,  Mrs.  Shelley's  Frankenstein,  and  such 
"  Gothic  "  romances  as  Lewis's  Monk,  Walpole's 
Castle  of  Otranto,  and  Mrs.  Radrliffe's  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho.  A  distinguishing  characteristic  of  this 
whole  school  is  what  we  may  call  the  clumsy-hor 
rible.  Brown's  romances  are  not  wanting  in  in 
ventive  power,  in  occasional  situations  that  are  in 
tensely  thrilling,  and  in  subtle  analysis  of  charac 
ter;  but  they  are  fatally  defective  in  art.  The 
narrative  is  by  turns  abrupt  and  tiresomely  prolix, 
proceeding  not  so  much  by  dialogue  as  by  elabo 
rate  dissection  and  discussion  of  motives  and  states 
of  mind,  interspersed  with  the  author's  reflections. 
The  wild  improbabilities  of  plot  and  the  unnatural 
and  even  monstrous  developments  of  character 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  Si 

are  in  startling  contrast  with  the  old-fashioned  pre- 
ciseness  of  the  language  ;  the  conversations,  when 
there  are  any,  being  conducted  in  that  insipid  dia 
lect  in  which  a  fine  woman  was  called  an  "  elegant 
female."  The  following  is  a  sample  description  of 
one  of  Brown's  heroines,  and  is  taken  from  his 
novel  of  Ormond,  the  leading  character  in  which — 
a  combination  of  unearthly  intellect  with  fiendish 
wickedness — is  thought  to  have  been  suggested  by 
Aaron  Burr :  "  Helena  Cleves  was  endowed  with 
every  feminine  and  fascinating  quality.  Her  feat 
ures  were  modified  by  the  most  transient  senti 
ments  and  were  the  seat  of  a  softness  at  all  times 
blushful  and  bewitching.  All  those  graces  of  sym 
metry,  smoothness  and  lustre,  which  assemble  in 
the  imagination  of  the  painter  when  he  calls  from 
the  bosom  of  her  natal  deep  the  Paphian  divinity, 
blended  their  perfections  in  the  shade,  com 
plexion,  and  hair  of  this  lady."  But,  alas  !  "  Hel 
ena's  intellectual  deficiencies  could  not  be  con 
cealed.  She  was  proficient  in  the  elements  of  no 
science.  The  doctrine  of  lines  and  surfaces  was  as 
disproportionate  with  her  intellects  as  with  those 
of  the  mock-bird.  She  had  not  reasoned  on  the 
principles  of  human  action,  nor  examined  the 
structure  of  society.  .  .  .  She  could  not  commune 
in  their  native  dialect  with  the  sages  of  Rome  and 
Athens.  .  .  .  The  constitution  of  nature,  the  at 
tributes  of  its  Author,  the  arrangement  of  the 
parts  of  the  external  universe,  and  the  substance, 
modes  of  operation,  and  ultimate  destiny  of  human 
6 


82  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

intelligence  were  enigmas  unsolved  and  insoluble 
by  her." 

Brown  frequently  raises  a  superstructure  of  mys 
tery  on  a  basis  ludicrously  weak.  Thus  the  hero 
of  his  first  novel,  Wieland  (whose  father  antici 
pates  "  Nemo,"  in  Dickens's  Bleak  House,  by  dying 
of  spontaneous  combustion),  is  led  on  by  what  he 
mistakes  for  spiritual  voices  to  kill  his  wife  and 
children  ;  and  the  voices  turn  out  to  be  produced 
by  the  ventriloquism  of  one  Carwin,  the  villain  of 
the  story.  Similarly  in  Edgar  Huntley,  the  plot 
turns  upon  the  phenomena  of  sleep-walking. 
Brown  had  the  good  sense  to  place  the  scene  of 
his  romances  in  his  own  country,  and  the  only 
passages  in  them  which  have  now  a  living  interest 
are  his  descriptions  of  wilderness  scenery  in  Ed 
gar  Huntley,  and  his  graphic  account  in  Arthur 
Mervyn  of  the  yellow-fever  epidemic  in  Philadel 
phia  in  1793.  Shelley  was  an  admirer  of  •  Brown, 
and  his  experiments  in  prose  fiction,  such  as  Zas- 
trozzi  and  St.  Irvyne  the  Rosicrucian,  are  of  the 
same  abnormal  and  speculative  type. 

Another  book  which  falls  within  this  period  was 
the  Journal,  1774,  of  John  Woolman,  a  New  Jer 
sey  Quaker,  which  has  received  the  highest  praise 
from  Channing,  Charles  Lamb,  and  many  others. 
"  Get  the  writings  of  John  Woolman  by  heart," 
wrote  Lamb,  "  and  love  the  early  Quakers."  The 
charm  of  this  journal  resides  in  its  singular  sweet 
ness  and  innocence  of  feeling,  the  "deep  imvar  1 
stillness"  peculiar  to  the  people  called  Quaker- 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  83 

Apart  from  his  constant  use  of  certain  phrases 
peculiar  to  the  Friends,  Woolman's  English  is 
also  remarkably  graceful  and  pure,  the  transparent 
medium  of  a  soul  absolutely  sincere,  and  tender 
and  humble  in  its  sincerity.  When  not  working 
at  his  trade  as  a  tailor,  Woolman  spent  his  time  in 
visiting  and  ministering  to  the  monthly,  quarterly, 
and  yearly  meetings  of  Friends,  traveling  on 
horseback  to  their  scattered  communities  in  the 
backwoods  of  Virginia  and  North  Carolina,  and 
northward  along  the  coast  as  far  as  Boston  and 
Nantucket.  He  was  under  a  u  concern  "  and  a 
"heavy  exercise  "  touching  the  keeping  of  slaves, 
and  by  his  writing  and  speaking  did  much  to  in 
fluence  the  Quakers  against  slavery.  His  love 
went  out,  indeed,  to  all  the  wretched  and  op 
pressed  ;  to  sailors,  and  to  the  Indians  in  partic 
ular.  One  of  his  most  perilous  journeys  was  made 
to  the  settlements  of  Moravian  Indians  in  the  wil 
derness  of  Western  Pennsylvania,  at  Bethlehem, 
and  at  Wehaloosing,  on  the  Susquehanna.  Some  of 
the  scruples  which  Woolman  felt,  and  the  quaint 
naivete  with  which  he  expresses  them,  may  make 
the  modern  reader  smile — but  it  is  a  smile  which 
is  very  close  to  a  tear.  Thus,  when  in  England — 
where  he  died  in  1772 — he  would  not  ride  nor 
send  a  letter  by  mail-coach,  because  the  poor  post 
boys  were  compelled  to  ride  long  stages  in  winter 
nights,  and  were  sometimes  frozen  to  death.  "  So 
great  is  the  hurry  in  the  spirit  of  this  world,  that  in 
aiming  to  do  business  quickly  and  to  gain  wealth, 


84  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  creation  at  this  day  doth  loudly  groan."  Again, 
having  reflected  that  war  was  caused  by  luxury  in 
dress,  etc.,  the  use  of  dyed  garments  grew  uneasy 
to  him,  and  he  got  and  wore  a  hat  of  the  natural 
color  of  the  fur.  "In  attending  meetings,  this 
singularity  was  a  trial  to  me  .  .  .  and  some  Friends, 
who  knew  not  from  what  motives  I  wore  it,  grew 
shy  of  me.  .  .  .  Those  who  spoke  with  me  I  gen 
erally  informed,  in  a  few  words,  that  I  believed 
my  wearing  it  was  not  in  my  own  will." 

1 .  Representative  American  Orations.     Edited 
by  Alexander  Johnston.     New  York  :  G.  P.  Put 
nam's  Sons.     1884. 

2.  The  Federalist.     New  York:  Charles  Scrib- 
ner.     1863. 

3.  Notes   on  Virginia.     By  Thomas   Jefferson. 
Boston.     1829. 

4.  Travels   in    New  England    and    New  York. 
By  Timothy  Dwight.     New  Haven.    1821. 

5.  McFingal :    in  Trumbull's    Poetical  Works. 
Hartford  :  1820. 

6.  Joel  Barlow's  Hasty  Pudding.     Francis  Hop- 
kinson's  Modern  Learning.     Philip  Freneau's  In 
dian  Student,  Indian  Burying-Ground,  and   White 
Honeysuckle:  in  Vol.  I.  of  Duyckinck's  Cyclopedia 
of    American    Literature.      New    York  :    Charles 
Scribner.     1866. 

7.  Arthur  Mervyn.    By  Charles  Brockden  Brown. 
Boston:  S.  G.  Goodrich.     1827. 

8.  The    Journal   of  John  Woolman.     With   an 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  PERIOD.  85 

Introduction  by  John  G.  Whittier.    Boston:  James 
R.  Osgood  &  Co.     1871. 

9.  American   Literature.     By  Charles   F.  Rich 
ardson.     New  York:   G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.    1887. 

10.  American    Literature.       By   John    Nichol. 
Edinburgh  :  Adam  &  Charles  Black.     1882. 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  III. 
THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION. 

1815-1837. 

THE  attempt  to  preserve  a  strictly  chronological 
order  must  here  be  abandoned.  About  all  the 
American  literature  in  existence,  that  is  of  any 
value  as  literature,  is  the  product  of  the  past  three 
quarters  of  a  century,  and  the  men  who  produced 
it,  though  older  or  younger,  were  still  contempo 
raries.  Irving's  Knickerbocker 's  History  of  New 
York,  1809,  was  published  within  the  recollection 
of  some  yet  living,  and  the  venerable  poet,  Richard 
H.  Dana — Irving's  junior  by  only  four  years — sur 
vived  to  1879,  when  the  youngest  of  the  genera 
tion  of  writers  that  now  occupy  public  attention 
had  already  won  their  spurs.  Bryant,  whose 
Thanatopsis  was  printed  in  1816,  lived  down  to 
1878.  He  saw  the  beginnings  of  our  national  lit 
erature,  and  he  saw  almost  as  much  of  the  latest 
phase  of  it  as  we  see  to-day  in  this  year  1887 
Still,  even  within  the  limits  of  a  single  life-time, 
there  have  been  progress  and  change.  And  so, 
while  it  will  happen  that  the  consideration  of 
writers  a  part  of  whose  work  falls  between  the 
dates  at  the  head  of  this  chapter  may  be  postponed 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.       87 

to  subsequent  chapters,  we  may  in  a  general  way 
follow  the  sequence  of  time. 

The  period  between  the  close  of  the  second  war 
with  England,  in  1815,  and  the  great  financial 
"rash  of  1837,  has  been  called,  in  language  attrib 
uted  to  President  Monroe,  "the  era  of  good  feel 
ing."  It  was  a  time  of  peace  and  prosperity,  of 
rapid  growth  in  population  and  rapid  extension 
of  territory.  The  new  nation  was  entering  upon 
its  vast  estates  and  beginning  to  realize  its  mani 
fest  destiny.  The  peace  with  Great  Britain,  by 
calling  off  the  Canadian  Indians  and  the  other 
tribes  in  alliance  with  England,  had  opened  up 
the  North-west  to  settlement.  Ohio  had  been 
admitted  as  a  State  in  1802  ;  but  at  the  time  of 
President  Monroe's  tour,  in  1817,  Cincinnati  had 
only  seven  thousand  inhabitants,  and  half  of  the 
State  was  unsettled.  The  Ohio  River  flowed  for 
most  of  its  course  through  an  unbroken  wilder 
ness.  Chicago  was  merely  a  fort.  Hitherto  the 
emigration  to  the  West  had  been  sporadic;  now  it 
took  on  the  dimensions  of  a  general  and  almost 
a  concerted  exodus.  This  movement  was  stimu 
lated  in  New  England  by  the  cold  summer  of  1816 
and  the  late  spring  of  1817,  which  produced  a 
scarcity  of  food  that  amounted  in  parts  of  the 
interior  to  a  veritable  famine.  All  through  this 
period  sounded  the  axe  of  the  pioneer  clearing 
the  forest  about  his  log  cabin,  and  the  rumble  of 
the  canvas -covered  emigrant  wagon  over  the 
primitive  highways  which  crossed  the  Alleghanies 


88 

or  followed  the  valley  of  the  Mohawk.  S.  G.  Good 
rich,  known  in  letters  as  "  Peter  Parley,"  in  his 
Recollections  of  a  Lifetime,  1856,  describes  the  part 
of  the  movement  which  he  had  witnessed  as  a  boy 
in  Fairfield  County,  Conn. :  "  I  remember  very  welt 
the  tide  of  emigration  through  Connecticut,  ott  its 
way  to  the  West,  during  the  summer  of  j^Siy. 
Some  persons  went  in  covered  wagons — frequerit- 
ly  a  family  consisting  of  father,  mother,  and  nine 
small  children,  with  one  at  the  breast — some  on 
foot,  and  some  crowded  together  under  the  cover, 
with  kettles,  gridirons,  feather  beds,  crockery,  and 
the  family  Bible,  Watts's  Psalms  and  Hymns,  and 
Webster's  Spelling-book — the  lares  and  penates  of 
the  household.  Others  started  in  ox-carts,  and 
trudged  on  at  the  rate  of  ten  miles  a  day.  .  .  . 
Many  of  these  persons  were  in  a  state  of  poverty, 
and  begged  their  way  as  they  went.  Some  died 
before  they  reached  the  expected  Canaan  ;  many 
perished  after  their  arrival  from  fatigue  and  priva 
tion  ;  and  others  from  the  fever  and  ague,  which 
was  then  certain  to  attack  the  new  settlers.  It  was, 
I  think,  in  1818  that  I  published  a  small  tract 
entitled  'Tother  Side  of  Ohio—  that  is,  the  other 
view,  in  contrast  to, the  popular  notion  that  it  was 
the  paradise  of  the  world.  It  was  written  by  Dr. 
Hand — a  talented  young  physician  of  Berlin — who 
had  made  a  visit  to  the  West  about  these  days.  It 
consisted  mainly  of  vivid  but  painful  pictures  of 
the  accidents  and  incidents  attending  this  whole 
sale  migration.  The  roads  over  the  Alleghanies, 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.       89 

between  Philadelphia  and  Pittsburg,  were  then 
rude,  steep,  and  dangerous,  and  some  of  the  more 
precipitous  slopes  were  consequently  strewn  with 
the  carcases  of  wagons,  carts,  horses,  oxen,  which 
had  made  shipwreck  in  their  perilous  descents." 

But  in  spite  of  the  hardships  of  the  settler's  life, 
the  spirit  of  that  time,  as  reflected  in  its  writings, 
was  a  hopeful  and  a  light-hearted  one. 

"  Westward  the  course  of  empire  takes  its  way," 

runs  the  famous  line  from  Berkeley's  poem  on 
America.  The  New  Englanders  who  removed  to 
the  Western  Reserve  went  there  to  better  them- 
elves;  and  their  children  found  themselves  the 
owners  of  broad  acres  of  virgin  soil,  in  place  of 
the  stony -hill  pastures  of  Berkshire  and  Litch- 
field.  There  was  an  attraction,  too,  about  the 
wild,  free  life  of  the  frontiersman,  with  all  its 
perils  and  discomforts.  The  life  of  Daniel  Boone, 
the  pioneer  of  Kentucky — that  "  dark  and  bloody 
ground " — is  a  genuine  romance.  Hardly  less 
picturesque  was  the  old  river  life  of  the  Ohio 
boatmen,  before  the  coming  of  steam  banished 
their  queer  craft  from  the  water.  Between  1810 
and  1840  the  center  of  population  in  the  United 
States  had  moved  from  the  Potomac  to  the  neigh 
borhood  of  Clarksburg,  in  West  Virginia,  and  the 
population  itself  had  increased  from  seven  to 
seventeen  millions.  The  gain  was  made  partly 
in  the  East  and  South,  but  the  general  drift  was 
westward.  During  the  years  now  under  review, 


90  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  following  new  States  were  admitted,  in  the 
order  named :  Indiana,  Mississippi,  Illinois,  Ala 
bama,  Maine,  Missouri,  Arkansas,  Michigan.  Ken 
tucky  and  Tennessee  had  been  made  States  in  the 
last  years  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  Louisiana 
— acquired  by  purchase  from  France — in  1812. 

The  settlers,  in  their  westward  march,  left  large 
tracts  of  wilderness  behind  them.  They  took  up 
first  the  rich  bottom  lands  along  the  river  courses, 
the  Ohio  and  Miami  and  Licking,  and  later  the  val 
leys  of  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri,  and  the  shores 
of  the  great  lakes.  But  there  still  remained  back 
woods  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  though  the 
cities  of  New  York  and  Philadelphia  had  each  a 
population  of  more  than  one  hundred  thousand  in 
1815.  When  the  Erie  Canal  was  opened,  in  1825, 
it  ran  through  a  primitive  forest.  N.  P.  Willis,  who 
went  by  canal  to  Buffalo  and  Niagara  in  1827,  de 
scribes  the  houses  and  stores  at  Rochester  as 
standing  among  the  burnt  stumps  left  by  the  first 
settlers.  In  the  same  year  that  saw  the  opening  of 
this  great  water  way,  the  Indian  tribes,  numbering 
now  about  one  hundred  and  thirty  thousand  souls, 
were  moved  across  the  Mississippi.  Their  power 
had  been  broken  by  General  Harrison's  victory 
over  Tecumseh  at  the  battle  of  Tippecanoe,  in 
1811,  and  they  were  in  fact  mere  remnants  and 
fragments  of  the  race  which  had  hung  upon  the 
skirts  of  civilization,  and  disputed  the  advance  of 
the  white  man  for  two  centuries.  It  was  not  until 
some  years  later  than  this  that  railroads  began 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.       91 

to  take  an    important  share  in    opening    up    new 
country. 

The  restless  energy,  the  love  of  adventure,  the 
sanguine  anticipation  which  characterized  Ameri 
can  thought  at  this  time,  the  picturesque  contrasts 
to  be  seen  in  each  mushroom  town  where  civiliza 
tion  was  encroaching  on  the  raw  edge  of  the  wil 
derness — all  these  found  expression,  not  only  in 
such  well-known  books  as  Cooper's  Pioneers,  1823, 
and  Irving's  Tour  on  the  Prairies,  1835,  but  in 
the  minor  literature  which  is  read  to-day,  if  at  all, 
not  for  its  own  sake,  but  for  the  light  that  it  throws 
on  the  history  of  national  development :  in  such 
books  as  Paulding's  story  of  Westward  Ho !  and 
his  poem,  The  Backivoodsman,  1818;  or  as  Tim 
othy  Flint's  Recollections,  1826,  and  his  Geography 
and  History  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  1827.  It  was 
not  an  age  of  great  books,  but  it  was  an  age  of 
large  ideas  and  expanding  prospects.  The  new 
consciousness  of  empire  uttered  itself  hastily, 
crudely,  ran  into  buncombe,  "  spread-eagleism," 
and  other  noisy  forms  of  patriotic  exultation  ;  but 
it  was  thoroughly  democratic  and  American. 
Though  literature — or  at  least  the  best  literature 
of  the  time — was  not  yet  emancipated  from  En 
glish  models,  thought  and  life,  at  any  rate,  were 
no  longer  in  bondage — no  longer  provincial.  And 
it  is  significant  that  the  party  in  office  during 
these  years  was  the  Democratic,  the  party  which 
had  broken  most  completely  with  conservative 
traditions.  The  famous  " Monroe  doctrine"  was 


92  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

a  pronunciamento  of  this  aggressive  democracy, 
and  though  the  Federalists  returned  to  power  for 
a  single  term,  under  John  Quincy  Adams  (1825- 
1829,)  Andrew  Jackson  received  the  largest  num 
ber  of  electoral  votes,  and  Adams  was  only  chosen 
by  the  House  of  Representatives  in  the  absence 
of  a  majority  vote  for  any  one  candidate.  At  the 
close  of  his  term  "Old  Hickory,"  the  hero  of  the 
people,  the  most  characteristically  democratic  of 
our  Presidents,  and  the  first  backwoodsman  who 
entered  the  White  House,  was  borne  into  office  on 
a  wave  of  popular  enthusiasm.  We  have  now  ar 
rived  at  the  time  when  American  literature,  in  the 
higher  and  stricter  sense  of  the  term,  really  began 
to  have  an  existence.  S.  G.  Goodrich,  who  settled 
at  Hartford  as  a  bookseller  and  publisher  in  1818, 
says,  in  his  Recollections :  "About  this  time  I  began 
to  think  of  trying  to  bring  out  original  American 
works.  .  .  .  The  general  impression  was  that  we 
had  not,  and  could  not  have,  a  literature.  It  was 
the  precise  point  at  which  Sidney  Smith  had  ut 
tered  that'  bitter  taunt  in  the  Edinburgh  Review, 
'Who  reads  an  American  book  ? '  .  .  .  It  was  posi 
tively  injurious  to  the  commercial  credit  of  a  book 
seller  to  undertake  American  works."  Washington 
Irving  (1783-1859)  was  the  first  American  author 
whose  books,  as  books,  obtained  recognition  abroad  ; 
whose  name  was  thought  worthy  of  mention  beside 
the  names  of  English  contemporary  authors,  like 
Byron,  Scott,  and  Coleridge.  He  was  also  the 
first  American  writer  whose  writings  are  still  read 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.        93 

for  their  own  sake.  We  read  Mather's  Magnalia, 
and  Franklin's  Autobiography,  and  Trumbull's 
McFingal — if  we  read  them  at  all — as  history,  and 
to  learn  about  the  times  or  the  men.  But  we  read 
the  Sketch  Book,  and  Knickerbocker  s  History  of 
New  York,  and  the  Conquest  of  Granada  for  them 
selves,  and  for  the  pleasure  that  they  give  as  pieces 
of  literary  art. 

We  have  arrived,  too,  at  a  time  when  we  may  ap 
ply  a  more  cosmopolitan  standard  to  the  works  of 
American  writers,  and  may  disregard  many  a  minor 
author  whose  productions  would  have  cut  some 
figure  had  they  come  to  light  amid  the  poverty  of 
our  colonial  age.  Hundreds  of  these  forgotten 
names,  with  specimens  of  their  unread  writings,  are 
consigned  to  a  limbo  of  immortality  in  the  pages 
of  Duyckinck's  Cyclopedia,  and  of  Griswold's  Poets 
of  America  and  Prose  Writers  of  America.  We 
may  select  here  for  special  mention,  and  as  most 
representative  of  the  thought  of  their  time,  the 
names  of  Irving,  Cooper,  Webster,  and  Channing. 

A  generation  was  now  co'ming  upon  the  stage 
who  could  recall  no  other  government  in  this 
country  than  the  government  of  the  United  States, 
and  to  whom  the  Revolutionary  War  was  but  a 
tradition.  Born  in  the  very  year  of  the  peace,  it 
was  a  part  of  Irving's  mission,  by  the  sympathetic 
charm  of  his  writings  and  by  the  cordial  recog 
nition  which  he  won  in  both  countries,  to  allay 
the  soreness  which  the  second  war,  of  1812-15, 
had  left  between  England  and  America.  He  was 


94  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

well  fitted  for  the  task  of  mediator.  Conservative 
by  nature,  early  drawn  to  the  venerable  worship 
of  the  Episcopal  Church,  retrospective  in  his 
tastes,  with  a  preference  for  the  past  and  its  his 
toric  associations  which,  even  in  young  America, 
led  him  to  invest  the  Hudson  and  the  region 
about  New  York  with  a  legendary  interest,  he 
wrote  of  American  themes  in  an  English  fashion, 
and  interpreted  to  an  American  public  the  mellow 
attractiveness  that  he  found  in  the  life  and  scenery 
of  Old  England.  He  lived  in  both  countries,  and 
loved  them  both  ;  and  it  is  hard  to  say  whether 
Irving  is  more  of  an  English  or  of  an  American 
writer.  His  first  visit  to  Europe,  in  1804-6,  occu 
pied  nearly  two  years.  From  1815  to  1832  he  was 
abroad  continuously,  and  his  "  domicile,"  as  the 
lawyers  say,  during  these  seventeen  years  was 
really  in  England,  though  a  portion  of  his  time 
was  spent  upon  the  continent,  and  several  succes 
sive  years  in  Spain,  where  he  engaged  upon  the 
Life  of  Columbus •,  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  the 
Companions  of  Columbus,  and  the  Alhambra,  all  pub 
lished  between  1828-32.  From  1842  to  1846  he 
was  again  in  Spain  as  American  Minister  at  Madrid. 
Xryj^g  wao  the  last  and'  greatest  of  the  Addisoni- 
ans.  His  boyish  letters,  signed  ''Jonathan  Old- 
style,"  contributed  in  1802  to  his  brother's  news 
paper,  the  Morning  Chronicle,  were,  like  Franklin's 
Busybody,  close  imitations  of  the  Spectator.  To  the 
same  family  belonged  his  Salmagundi  papers,  1807. 
a  series  of  town-satires  on  New  York  society,  written 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.       95 

in  conjunction  with  his  brother  William  and  with 
James  K.  Paulding.  The  little  tales,  essays,  and 
sketches  which  compose  the  Sketch  Book  were 
written  in  England,  and  published  in  America,  in 
periodical  numbers,  in  1819-20.  In  this,  which 
is  in  some  respects  his  best  book,  he  still  main 
tained  that  attitude  of  observation  and  spectator- 
slji]LJJi£g]^him  TrjTAddison. The  volume  had  a 
motto  takelr~fF6rn  "Burton,  "I  have  no  wife  nor 
children,  good  or  bad,  to  provide  for  —  a  mere 
'spectator  of  other  men's  fortunes/'  etc.;  and  "The 
Author's  Account  of  Himself"  began  in  true  Ad- 
disonian  fashion  :  "  1  was  always  fond  of  visiting 
new  scenes  and  observing  strange  characters  and 
manners." 

But  though  never  violently  "American,"  like 
some  later  writers  who  have  consciously  sought 
to  throw  off  the  trammels  of  English  tradition, 
Irving  was  in  a  real  way  original.  His  most  dis 
tinct  addition  to  our  national  literature  was  in  his 
creation  of  what  has  been  called  "the  Knicker 
bocker  legend."  He  was  the  firs  to  make  use, 
for  literary  purposes,  of  the  old  Dutch  traditions 
which  clustered  about  the  romantic  scenery  of  the 
Hudson.  Col.  T.  W.  Higginson,  in  his  History  of 
the  United  States,  tells  how  "  Mrs.  Josiah  Quincy, 
sailing  up  that  river  in  1786,  when  Irving  was  a 
child  three  years  old,  records  that  the  captain  of 
the  sloop  had  a  legend,  either  supernatural  or 
traditional,  for  every  scene,  'and  not  a  mountain 
reared  its  head  unconnected  with  some  marvelous 


96  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

story.'  "  The  material  thus  at  hand  Irving  shaped 
into  his  Knickerbocker  s  History  of  New  York,  into 
the  immortal  story  of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  and  the 
Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow  (both  published  in  the 
Sketch  Book),  and  in  later  additions  to  the  same 
realm  of  fiction,  such  as  Dolph  Heyliger  in  Brace- 
bridge  Hall,  the  Money  Diggers,  Wolfert  Webber, 
and  Kidd  the  Pirate,  in  the  Tales  of  a  Traveler, 
and  in  some  of  the  miscellanies  from  the  Knicker 
bocker  Magazine,  collected  into  a  volume,  in  1855, 
under  the  title  of  Wolf  erf  s  Roost. 

The  book  which  made  Irving's  reputation  was 
his  Knickerbocker  s  History  of  New  York,  1809,  a 
burlesque  chronicle,  making  fun  of  the  old  Dutch 
settlers  of  New  Amsterdam,  and  attributed,  by  a 
familiar  and  now  somewhat  threadbare  device,*  to 
a  little  old  gentleman  named  Diedrich  Knick 
erbocker,  whose  manuscript  had  come  into  the 
editor's  hands.  The  book  was  gravely  dedicated 
to  the  New  York  Historical  Society,  and  it  is  said 
to  have  been  quoted,  as  authentic  history,  by  a 
certain  German  scholar  named  Goeller,  in  a  note 
on  a  passage  in  Thucydides.  This  story,  though 
well  vouched,  is  hard  of  belief :  for  Knickerbocker, 
though  excellent  fooling,  has  nothing  of  the  grave 
irony  of  Swift  in  his  Modest  Proposal  or  of  Defoe 
in  his  Short  Way  with  Dissenters.  Its  mock-heroic^ 
intention  is  as  transparent  as  in  Fielding's  para- 
dies  of  Homer,  which  it  somewhat  resemble^ 

*  Compare  Carlyle's  Herr  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  in  Sartfr 
Rc'sartus,  the  author  of  the  famous  "  Clothes  Philosophy." 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.       97 

particularly  in  the  delightfully  absurd  description 
of  the  mustering  of  the  clans  under  Peter  Stuy- 
vesant  and  the  attack  on  the  Swedish  Fort  Chris 
tina.  Knickerbocker  s  History  of  New  York  was  a 
real  addition  to  the  comic  literature  of  the  world ; 
a  work  of  genuine  humor,  original  and  vital. 
Walter  Scott  said  that  it  reminded  him  closely  of 
Swift,  and  had  touches  resembling  Sterne.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  claim  for  Irving's  little  master 
piece  a  place  beside  Gulliver's  Travels  and  Tris 
tram  Shandy.  But  it  was,  at  least,  the  first  Amer 
ican  book  in  the  lighter  departments  of  literature 
which  needed  no  apology  and  stood  squarely  on 
its  own  legs.  It  was  written,  too,  at  just  the  right 
time.  Although  New  Amsterdam  had  become 
New  York  as  early  as  1664,  the  impress  of  its  first 
settlers,  with  their  quaint  conservative  ways,  was! 
still  upon  it  when  Irving  was  a  boy.  The  descend-/ 
ants  of  the  Dutch  families  formed  a  definite  element 
not  only  in  Manhattan,  but  all  up  along  the  kills  of 
the  Hudson,  at  Albany,  at  Schenectady,  in  West- 
chester  County,  at  Hoboken,  and  Communipaw, 
localities  made  familiar  to  him  in  many  a  ramble 
and  excursion.  He  lived  to  see  the  little  provin 
cial  town  of  his  birth  grow  into  a  great  metropolis, 
in  which  all  national  characteristics  were  blended 
together,  and  a  tide  of  immigration  from  Europe 
and  New  England  flowed  over  the  old  landmarks 
and  obliterated  them  utterly. 

Although  Irving  was  the  first  to  reveal   to  his 
countrymen  the  literary  possibilities  of  their  early 
7 


98  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

history,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  with  mod 
ern  American  life  he  had  little  sympathy.  He 
hated  politics,  and  in  the  restless  democratic 
movement  of  the  time,  as  we  have  described  it, 
he  found  no  inspiration.  This  moderate  and 
placid  gentleman,  with  his  distrust  of  all  kinds  of 
fanaticism,  had  no  liking  for  the  Puritans  or  for 
their  descendants,  the  New  England  Yankees,  if 
we  may  judge  from  his  sketch  of  Ichabod  Crane,  in 
the  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollcnv.  His  genius  was  remi 
niscent,  and  his  imagination,  like  Scott's,  was  the 
historic  imagination.  In  crude  America  his  fancy 
took  refuge  in  the  picturesque  aspects  of  the  past, 
in  "survivals"  like  the  Knickerbocker  Dutch  and 
the  Acadian  peasants,  whose  isolated  communities 
on  the  lower  Mississippi  he  visited  and  described. 
He  turned  naturally  to  the  ripe  civilization  of  the 
Old  World.  He  was  our  first  picturesque  tourist, 
the  first  "American  in  Europe."  He  rediscovered 
England,  whose  ancient  churches,  quiet  landscapes, 
memory-haunted  cities,  Christmas  celebrations, 
and  rural  festivals  had  for  him  an  unfailing  attrac 
tion.  With  pictures  of  these,  for  the  most  part, 
he  filled  the  pages  of  the  Sketch  Book  and  Brace- 
bridge  Hall,  1822.  -Delightful  as  are  these  English 
sketches,  in  which  the  author  conducts  his  readers 
to  Windsor  Castle,  or  Stratford-on-Avon,  or  the 
Boar's  Head  Tavern,  or  sits  beside  him  on  the 
box  of  the  old  English  stage-coach,  or  shares  with 
him  the  Yuletide  cheer  at  the  ancient  English 
country  house,  their  interest  has  somewhat  faded. 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.       99 

The  pathos  of  the  Broken  Heart  and  the  Pride 
of  the  Village,  the  mild  satire  of  the  Art  of  Book 
Making,  the  rather  obvious  reflections  in  West 
minster  Abbey  are  not  exactly  to  the  taste  of  this 
generation.  They  are  the  literature  of  leisure  and 
retrospection  ;  and  already  Irving's  gentle  elabo 
ration,  the  refined  and  slightly  artificial  beauty  of 
his  style,  and  his  persistently  genial  and  sympa 
thetic  attitude  have  begun  to  pall  upon  readers 
who  demand  a  more  nervous  and  accented  kind 
of  writing.  It  is  felt  that  a  little  roughness,  a  little 
harshness,  even,  would  give  relief  to  his  pictures 
of  life.  There  is,  for  instance,  something  a  little 
irritating  in  the  old-fashioned  courtliness  of  his 
manner  toward  women ;  and  one  reads  with  a 
certain  impatience  smoothly  punctuated  passages 
like  the  following:  "As  the  vine,  which  has  long 
twined  its  graceful  foliage  about  the  oak,  and  been 
lifted  by  it  into  sunshine,  will,  when  the  hardy 
plant  is  rifted  by  the  thunderbolt,  cling  round  it 
with  its  caressing  tendrils,  and  bind  up  its  shat 
tered  boughs,  so  is  it  beautifully  ordered  by  Prov 
idence  that  W^.nilj  W1™  *«?  thf  ™*»™  ^npnnrlnnt. 

and  ornament  of  man 

us  stay  and  solace  when  smitten  with  sudden 
calamity;  winding  herself  into  the  rugged  recesses 
of  his  nature,  tenderly  supporting  the  drooping 
head,  and  binding  up  the  broken  heart." 

Irving's  gifts  were  sentiment  and  humor,  with 
an  imagination  sufficiently  fertile,  and  an  observa 
tion  sufficiently  acute  to  support  those  two  main 


ioo  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

qualities,  but   inadequate  to   the  service  of  strong 
passion  or  subtle  thinking,  though   his  pathos,  in 
deed,  sometimes    reached  intensity.      His  humor 
\l  was    always    delicate    and    kindly  ;    his  sentiment 
\  never  degenerated  into  sentimentality.     His  dic- 
i  tion  was  graceful  and   elegant — too   elegant,  per 
haps  ;  and  in  his  modesty  he  attributed  the  success 
of  his  books   in  England  to  the  astonishment  of 
Englishmen   that   an  American   could  write  good 
English. 

In  Spanish  history  and  legend  Irving  found  a 
still  newer  and  richer  field  for  his  fancy  to  work 
upon.  He  had  not  the  analytic  and  philosophical 
mind  of  a  great  historian,  and  the  merits  of  his 
Conquest  of  Granada  and  Life  of  Columbus  are 
rather  bcllctristisch  than  scientific.  But  he  brought 
to  these  undertakings  the  same  eager  love  of  the 
romantic  past  which  had  determined  the  charac 
ter  of  his  writings  in  America  and  England,  and 
the  result — whether  we  call  it  history  or  romance — 
is  at  all  events  charming  as  literature.  His  Life 
of  Washington — completed  in  1859 — was  his  mag 
num  opus,  and  is  accepted  as  standard  authority. 
Mahomet  and  His  Successors,  1850,  was  compara 
tively  a  failure.  But  of  all  Irving's  biographies, 
his  Life  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,  1849,  was  the  most 
spontaneous  and  perhaps  the  best.  He  did  not 
impose  it  upon  himself  as  a  task,  but  wrote  it  from 
a  native  and  loving  sympathy  with  his  subject,  and 
it  is,  therefore,  one  of  the  choisest  literary  memoirs 
in  the  language. 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  iAx 


When  Irving  returned  to  America,  in  1832,  he 
was  the  recipient  of  almost  national  honors.  He 
had  received  the  medal  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Literature  and  the  degree  of  D.C.L.  from  Oxford 
University,  and  had  made  American  literature 
known  and  respected  abroad.  In  his  modest 
home  at  Sunnyside,  on  the  banks  of  the  river 
over  which  he  had  been  the  first  to  throw  the 
witchery  of  poetry  and  romance,  he  was  attended 
to  the  last  by  the  admiring  affection  of  his  coun 
trymen.  He  had  the  love  and  praises  of  the  fore 
most  English  writers  of  his  own  generation  and 
the  generation  which  followed  —  of  Scott,  Byron, 
Coleridge,  Thackeray,  and  Dickens,  some  of  whom 
had  been  among  his  personal  friends.  He  is 
not  the  greatest  of  American  authors,  but  the 
influence  of  his  writings  is  sweet  and  wholesome, 
and  it  is  in  many  ways  fortunate  that  the  first 
American  man  of  letters  who  made  himself  heard 
in  Europe  should  have  been  in  all  particulars  a 
gentleman. 

Connected  with  Irving,  at  least  by  name  and 
locality,  were  a  number  of  authors  who  resided 
in  the  city  of  New  York  and  who  are  known  as 
the  Knickerbocker  writers,  perhaps  because  they 
were  contributors  to  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine. 
One  of  these  was  James  K.  Paulding,  a  con 
nection  of  Irving  by  marriage,  and  his  partner 
in  the  Salmagundi  Papers.  Paulding  became 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  under  Van  Buren,  and 
lived  down  to  the  year  1860.  He  was  a  volumi- 


i.o2  A.V.E&ICAN  LITERATURE. 

nous  author,  but  his  writings  had  no  power  of 
continuance,  and  are  already  obsolete,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  his  novel,  the  Dutchman's 
Fireside,  1831. 

A  finer  spirit  than  Paulding  was  Joseph  Rod 
man  Drake,  a  young  poet  of  great  promise,  who 
died  in  1820,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five.  Drake's 
patriotic  lyric,  the  American  Flag,  is  certainly  the 
most  spirited  thing  of  the  kind  in  our  poetic  liter 
ature,  and  greatly  superior  to  such  national  anthems 
as  Hail  Columbia  and  the  Star  Spangled  Banner, 
His  Culprit  Fay,  published  in  1819,  was  the  best 
poem  that  had  yet  appeared  in  America,  if  we  ex 
cept  Bryant's  Thanatopsis,  which  was  three  years 
the  elder.  The  Culprit  Fay  was  a  fairy  story,  in 
which,  following  Irving's  lead,  Drake  undertook  to 
throw  the  glamour  of  poetry  about  the  Highlands 
of  the  Hudson.  Edgar  Poe  said  that  the  poem 
was  fanciful  rather  than  imaginative  ;  but  it  is 
prettily  and  even  brilliantly  fanciful,  and  has  main 
tained  its  popularity  to  the  present  time.  Such 
verse  as  the  following — which  seems  to  show  that 
Drake  had  been  reading  Coleridge's  Christabel, 
published  three  years  before — was  something  new 
in  American  poetry : 

"  The  winds  are  whist  and  the  owl  is  still, 

The  bat  in  the  shelvy  rock  is  hid, 
And  naught  is  heard  on  the  lonely  hill, 
But  the  cricket's  chirp  and  the  answer  shrill, 

Of  the  gauze-winged  katydid, 
And  the  plaint  of  the  wailing  whip-poor-will 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.      103 

Who  moans  unseen,  and  ceaseless  sings 
Ever  a  note  of  wail  and  woe, 

Till  morning  spreads  her  rosy  wings, 
And  earth  and  sky  ia  her  glances  glow," 

Here  we  have,  at  last,  the  whip-poor-will,  an 
American  bird,  and  not  the  conventional  lark  or 
nightingale,  although  the  elves  of  the  Old  World 
seem  scarcely  at  home  on  the  banks  of  the  Hud 
son.  Drake's  memory  has  been  kept  fresh  not 
only  by  his  own  poetry,  but  by  the  beautiful  elegy 
written  by  his  friend  Fitz-Greene  Haileck,  the  first 
stanza  of  which  is  universally  known ; 

*'  Green  be  the  turf  above  thee. 

Friend  of  my  better  days  ; 
None  knew  thee  but  to  love  thee, 

Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise." 

Halleck  was  born  in  Guilford,  Connecticut, 
whither  he  retired  in  1849,  and  resided  there  till 
his  death  in  1867.  But  his  literary  career  is  iden 
tified  with  New  York.  He  was  associated  with 
Drake  in  writing  the  Croaker  Papers,  a  series  of 
humorous  and  satirical  verses  contributed  in  1814 
to  the  Evening  Post.  These  were  of  a  merely 
local  and  temporary  interest;  but  Halleck's  fine 
ode,  Marco  Bozzaris — though  declaimed  until  it 
has  become  hackneyed — gives  him  a  sure  title  to 
remembrance ;  and  his  Alnwick  Castle,  a  monody, 
half  serious  and  half  playful  on  the  contrasts  be 
tween  feudal  associations  and  modern  life,  has 


104  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

much  of  that   pensive  lightness  which  character 
izes  Praed's  best  vers  de  societe. 

A  friend  of  Drake  and  Halleck  was  James 
Fenimore  Cooper  (1789-1851),  the  first  American 
novelist  of  distinction,  and,  if  a  popularity  which 
has  endured  for  nearly  three  quarters  of  a  century 
is  any  test,  still  the  most  successful  of  all  Ameri 
can  novelists.  Cooper  was  far  more  intensely 
American  than  Irving,  and  his  books  reached  an 
even  wider  public.  "  They  are  published  as  soon 
as  he  produces  them,"  said  Morse,  the  electrician, 
in  1833,  "  m  thirty-four  different  places  in  Europe. 
They  have  been  seen  by  American  travelers  in  the 
languages  of  Turkey  and  Persia,  in  Constantino 
ple,  in  Egypt,  at  Jerusalem,  at  Ispahan."  Cooper 
wrote  altogether  too  much  ;  he  published,  besides 
his  fictions,  a  Naval  History  of  the  United  States, 
a  series  of  naval  biographies,  works  of  travel,  and 
a  great  deal  of  controversial  matter.  He  wrote 
over  thirty  novels,  the  greater  part  of  which  are 
little  better  than  trash,  and  tedious  trash  at  that. 
This  is  especially  true  of  his  tendenz  novels  and  his 
novels  of  society.  He  was  a  man  of  strongly 
marked  individuality,  fiery,  pugnacious,  sensitive 
to  criticism,  and  abounding  in  prejudices.  He  was 
embittered  by  the  scurrilous  attacks  made  upon 
him  by  a  portion  of  the  American  press,  and  spent 
a  great  deal  of  time  and  energy  in  conducting  libel 
suits  against  the  newspapers.  In  the  same  spirit 
he  used  fiction  as  a  vehicle  for  attack  upon  the 
abuses  and  follies  of  American  life.  Nearly  all  of 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.     "105 

his  novels,  written  with  this  design,  are  worthless. 
Nor  was  Cooper  well  equipped  by  nature  and  tem 
perament  for  depicting  character  and  passion  in 
social  life.  Even  in  his  best  romances  his  heroines 
and  his  "  leading  juveniles  " — to  borrow  a  term  from 
the  amateur  stage — are  insipid  and  conventional. 
He  was  no  satirist,  and  his  humor  was  not  of  a  high 
order.  He  was  a  rapid  and  uneven  writer,  and, 
unlike  Irving,  he  had  no  style. 

Where  Cooper  was  great  was  in  the  story,  in  the 
invention  of  incidents  and  plots,  in  a  power  of 
narrative  and  description  in  tales  of  wild  advent 
ure  which  keeps  the  reader  in  breathless  excite 
ment  to  the  end  of  the  book.  He  originated  the 
novel  of  the  sea  and  the  novel  of  the  wilderness. 
He  created  the  Indian  of  literature  ;  and  in  this,  his 
peculiar  field,  although  he  has  had  countless  imi 
tators,  he  has  had  no  equals.  Cooper's  experi 
ences  had  prepared  him  well  for  the  kingship  of 
this  new  realm  in  the  world  of  fiction.  His  child 
hood  was  passed  on  the  borders  of  Otsego  Lake, 
when  central  New  York  was  still  a  wilderness, 
with  boundless  forests  stretching  westward,  broken 
only  here  and  there  by  the  clearings  of  the  pio 
neers.  He  was  taken  from  college  (Yale)  when 
still  a  lad,  and  sent  to  sea  in  a  merchant  vessel, 
before  the  mast.  Afterward  he  entered  the  navy 
and  did  duty  on  the  high  seas  and  upon  Lake 
Ontario,  then  surrounded  by  virgin  forests.  He 
married  and  resigned  his  commission  in  1811,  just 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  war  with  England,  so 


To6*  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

that  he  missed  the  opportunity  of  seeing  active 
service  in  any  of  those  engagements  on  the  ocean 
and  our  great  lakes  which  were  so  glorious  to 
American  arms.  But  he  always  retained  an  active 
interest  in  naval  affairs. 

His  first  successful  novel  was  The  Spy,  1821,  a 
tale  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  the  scene  of  which 
was  laid  in  Westchester  County,  N.  Y.,  where  the 
author  was  then  residing.  The  hero  of  this  story, 
Harvey  Birch,  was  one  of  the  most  skillfully  drawn 
figures  on  his  canvas.  In  1823  he  published  the 
Pioneers,  a  work  somewhat  overladen  with  de 
scription,  in  which  he  drew  for  material  upon  his 
boyish  recollections  of  frontier  life  at  Coopers- 
lown.  This  was  the  first  of  the  series  of  five  ro 
mances  known  as  the  Leatherstocking  Tales.  The 
others  were  the  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  1826;  the 
Prairie,  1827;  the  Pathfinder,  1840;  and  the 
Deer  slayer,  1841.  The  hero  of  this  series,  Natty 
Bumpo,  or  "  Leatherstocking,"  was  Cooper's  one 
great  creation  in  the  sphere  of  charcter,  his  most 
original  addition  to  the  literature  of  the  world  in 
the  way  of  a  new  human  type.  This  backwoods 
philosopher — to  the  conception  of  whom  the  his 
toric  exploits  of  Daniel  Boone  perhaps  supplied 
some  hints ;  unschooled,  but  moved  by  noble 
impulses  and  a  natural  sense  of  piety  and  justice; 
passionately  attached  to  the  wilderness,  and  fol 
lowing  its  westering  edge  even  unto  the  prairies 
— this  man  of  the  woods  was  the  first  real  Ameri 
can  in  fiction.  Hardly  less  individual  and  vital 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.      107 

were  the  various  types  of  Indian  character,  in 
Chingachgook,  Uncas,  Hist,  and  the  Huron  war 
riors.  Inferior  to  these,  but  still  vigorously 
though  somewhat  roughly  drawn,  were  the  waifs 
and  strays  of  civilization,  whom  duty,  or  the  hope 
of  gain,  or  the  love  of  adventure,  or  the  outlawry 
of  crime  had  driven  to  the  wilderness — the  solitary 
trapper,  the  reckless  young  frontiersman,  the  offi 
cers  and  men  of  out-post  garrisons.  Whether 
Cooper's  Indian  was  the  real  being,  or  an  idealized 
and  rather  melo-dramatic  version  of  the  truth,  has 
been  a  subject  of  dispute.  However  this  be,  he 
has  taken  his  place  in  the  domain  of  art,  and  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  his  standing  there  is  secure.  No 
boy  will  ever  give  him  up. 

Equally  good  with  the  Leather  stocking  novels, 
and  equally  national,  were  Cooper's  tales  of  the 
sea,  or  at  least  the  two  best  of  them — the  Pilot, 
1823,  founded  upon  the  daring  exploits  of  John 
Paul  Jones,  and  the  Red  Rover,  1828.  But  here, 
though  Cooper  still  holds  the  sea,  he  has  had  to 
admit  competitors;  and  Britannia,  who  rules  the 
waves  in  song,  has  put  in  some  claim  to  a  share  in 
the  domain  of  nautical  fiction  in  the  persons  of 
Mr.W.  Clarke  Russell  and  others.  Though  Cooper's 
novels  do  not  meet  the  deeper  needs  of  the  heart 
and  the  imagination,  their  appeal  to  the  universal 
love  of  a  story  is  perennial.  We  devour  them  when 
we  are  boys,  and  if  we  do  not  often  return  to 
them  when  we  are  men,  that  is  perhaps  only  be 
cause  we  have  read  them  before,  and  "  know  the 


io8  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

ending."  They  are  good  yarns  for  the  forecastle 
and  the  camp-fire;  and  the  scholar  in  his  study, 
though  he  mayputthe  Deer  slayer  or  the  Last  of  the 
Mohicans  away  on  the  top-shelf,  will  take  it  down 
now  and  again,  and  sit  up  halt  the  night  over  it. 

Before  dismissing  the  belles-lettres  writings  of 
this  period,  mention  should  be  made  of  a  few 
poems  of  the  fugitive  kind  which  seem  to  have 
taken  a  permanent  place  in  popular  regard.  John 
Howard  Payne,  a  native  of  Long  Island,  a  wan 
dering  actor  and  playwright,  who  died  American 
Consul  at  Tunis  in  1852,  wrote  about  1820  for 
Covent  Garden  Theater  an  opera,  entitled  Clari, 
the  libretto  of  which  included  the  now  famous 
song  of  Home,  Sweet  Home.  Its  literary  pretensions 
were  of  the  humblest  kind,  but  it  spoke  a  true  word 
which  touched  the  Anglo-Saxon  heart  in  its  ten- 
derest  spot,  and  being  happily  married  to  a  plaint 
ive  air  was  sold  by  the  hundred  thousand,  and  is 
evidently  destined  to  be  sung  forever.  A  like 
success  has  attended  the  Old  Oaken  Bucket,  com 
posed  by  Samuel  Woodworth,  a  printer  and  jour 
nalist  from  Massachusetts,  whose  other  poems, 
of  which  two  collections  were  issued  in  1818  and 
1826,  were  soon  forgotten.  Richard  Henry  Wilde, 
an  Irishman  by  birth,  a  gentleman  of  scholarly 
tastes  and  accomplishments,  who  wrote  a  great 
deal  on  Italian  literature,  and  sat  for  several  terms 
in  Congress  as  Representative  of  the  State  of 
Georgia,  was  the  author  of  the  favorite  song,  My 
Life  is  Like  the  Summer  Rose.  Another  South- 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.      109 

erner,  and  a  member  of  a  distinguished  Southern 
family,  was  Edward  Coate  Pinkney,  who  served 
nine  years  in  the  navy,  and  died  in  1828,  at  the 
age  of  twenty-six,  having  published  in  1825  a 
small  volume  of  lyrical  poems  which  had  a  fire 
and  a  grace  uncommon  at  that  time  in  American 
verse.  One  of  these,  A  Health,  beginning 

"  I  fill  this  cup  to  one  made  up  of  loveliness  alone," 

though  perhaps  somewhat  overpraised  by  Edgar 
Poe,  has  rare  beauty  of  thought  and  expression. 
John  Quincy  Adams,  sixth  President  of  the  United 
States  (1825-29),  was  a  man  of  culture  and  of  liter 
ary  tastes.  He  published  his  lectures  on  rhetoric 
delivered  during  his  tenure  of  the  Boylston  Profes 
sorship  at  Harvard  in  1806-09;  he  left  a  volumi 
nous  diary,  which  has  been  edited  since  his  death 
in  1848;  and  among  his  experiments  in  poetry  is 
one  of  considerable  merit,  entitled  the  Wants  of 
Man,  an  ironical  sermon  on  Goldsmith's  text : 

"  Man  wants  but  little  here  below 
Nor  wants  that  little  long." 

As  this  poem  is  a  curiously  close  anticipation  of 
Dr.  Holmes's  Contentment,  so  the  very  popular 
ballad,  Old  Grimes,  written  about  1818,  by  Albert 
Gorton  Greene,  an  undergraduate  of  Brown  Uni 
versity  in  Rhode  Island,  is  in  some  respects  an 
anticipation  of  Holmes's  quaintly  pathetic  Last 
Leaf. 

The  political  literature   and  public  oratory   of 


no  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  United  States  during  this  period,  although  not 
absolutely  of  less  importance  than  that  which 
preceded  and  followed  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  and  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
demands  less  relative  attention  in  a  history  of  lit 
erature  by  reason  of  the  growth  of  other  depart 
ments  of  thought.  The  age  was  a  political  one, 
but  no  longer  exclusively  political.  The  debates 
of  the  time  centered  about  the  question  of  "  State 
Rights,"  and  the  main  forum  of  discussion  was  the 
old  Senate  chamber,  then  made  illustrious  by  the 
presence  of  Clay,  Webster,  and  Calhoun.  The 
slavery  question,  which  had  threatened  trouble, 
was  put  off  for  awhile  by  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise  of  1820,  only  to  break  out  more  fiercely  in 
the  debates  on  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  and  the 
Kansas  and  Nebraska  Bill.  Meanwhile  the  Aboli 
tion  movement  had  been  transferred  to  the  press 
and  the  platform.  Garrison  started  his  Liberator 
in  1830,  and  the  Antislavery  Society  was  founded 
in  1833.  The  Whig  party,  which  had  inherited 
the  constitutional  principles  of  the  old  Federal 
party,  advocated  internal  improvements  at  na 
tional  expense  and  a  high  protective  tariff.  The 
State  Rights  party,  which  was  strongest  at  the 
South,  opposed  these  views,  and  in  1832  South 
Carolina  claimed  the  right  to  "nullify"  the  tariff  im 
posed  by  the  general  government.  The  leader  of 
this  party  was  John  Caldwell  Calhoun,  a  South  Car 
olinian,  who  in  his  speech  in  the  United  States  Sen 
ate,  on  February  13,  1832,  on  Nullification  and  the 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION,      in 

Force  Bill,  set  forth  most  authoritatively  the  "  Caro 
lina  doctrine."  Calhoun  was  a  great  debater,  bu-t 
hardly  a  great  orator.  His  speeches  are  the  argu 
ments  of  a  lawyer  and  a  strict  constitutionalist, 
severely  logical,  and  with  a  sincere  conviction  in 
the  soundness  of  his  case.  Their  language  is  free 
from  bad  rhetoric;  the  reasoning  is  cogent,  but 
there  is  an  absence  of  emotion  and  imagination  ; 
they  contain  few  quotable  things,  and  no  passages 
of  commanding  eloquence,  such  as  strew  the  ora 
tions  of  Webster  and  Burke.  They  are  not,  in 
short,  literature.  Again,  the  speeches  of  Henry 
Clay,  of  Kentucky,  the  leader  of  the  Whigs,  whose 
persuasive  oratory  is  a  matter  of  tradition,  dis 
appoint  in  the  reading.  The  fire  has  gone  out  of 
them. 

Not  so  with  Daniel  Webster,  the  greatest  of 
American  forensic  orators,  if,  indeed,  he  be  not  the 
greatest  of  all  orators  who  have  used  the  English 
tongue.  Webster's  speeches  are  of  the  kind  that 
have  power  to  move  after  the  voice  of  the  speaker 
is  still.  The  thought  and  the  passion  in  them  lay 
hold  on  feelings  of  patriotism  more  lasting  than 
the  issues  of  the  moment.  It  is,  indeed,  true  of 
Webster's  speeches,  as  of  all  speeches,  that  they 
are  known  to  posterity  more  by  single  brilliant 
passages  than  as  wholes.  In  oratory  the  occasion 
is  of  the  essence  of  the  thing,  and  only  those  parts 
of  an  address  which  are  permanent  and  universal 
in  their  appeal  take  their  place  in  literature.  But 
of  such  detachable  passages  there  are  happily 


ii2  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

many  in  Webster's  orations.  One  great  thought  un 
derlay  all  his  public  life,  the  thought  of  the  Union; 
of  American  nationality.  What  in  Hamilton  had 
been  a  principle  of  political  philosophy  had  be 
come  in  Webster  a  passionate  conviction.  The 
Union  was  his  idol,  and  he  was  intolerant  of  any 
faction  which  threatened  it  from  any  quarter, 
whether  the  Nullifiers  of  South  Carolina  or  the 
Abolitionists  of  the  North.  It  is  this  thought 
which  gives  grandeur  and  elevation  to  all  his  ut 
terances,  and  especially  to  the  wonderful  perora 
tion  of  his  reply  to  Huyne,  on  Mr.  Foot's  resolu 
tion  touching  the  sale  of  the  public  lands,  delivered 
in  the  Senate  on  January  26,  1830,  whose  closing 
words,  "liberty  and  union,  now  and  forever,  one 
and  inseparable,"  became  the  rallying  cry  of  a  great 
cause.  Similar  in  sentiment  was  his  famous 
speech  of  March  7,  1850,  On  the  Constitution  and 
the  Union,  which  gave  so  much  offense  to  the  ex 
treme  Antislavery  party,  who  held  with  Garrison 
that  a  Constitution  which  protected  slavery  was  "a 
league  with  death  and  a  covenant  with  hell."  It  is 
not  claiming  too  much  for  Webster  to  assert  that 
the  sentences  of  these  and  other  speeches,  memo 
rized  and  declaimed  by  thousands  of  school-boys 
throughout  the  North,  did  as  much  as  any  single 
influence  to  train  up  a  generation  in  hatred  of 
secession,  and  to  send  into  the  fields  of  the  civil 
war  armies  of  men  animated  with  the  stern  reso 
lution  to  fight  till  the  last  drop  of  blood  was  shed, 
rather  than  allow  the  Union  to  be  dissolved. 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.      113 

1  \e  figure  of  this  great  senator  is  one  of  the 
most  imposing  in  American  annals.  The  mascu 
line  force  of  his  personality  impressed  itself  upon 
men  of  a  very  different  stamp — upon  the  unworldly 
Emerson,  and  upon  the  captious  Carlyle,  whose 
respect  was  not  willingly  accorded  to  any  con 
temporary,  much  less  to  a  representative  of  Amer 
ican  democracy.  Webster's  looks  and  manner 
were  characteristic.  His  form  was  massive,  his 
skull  and  jaw  solid,  the  underlip  projecting,  and 
the  mouth  firmly  and  grimly  shut;  his  complexion 
was  swarthy,  and  his  black,  deep  set  eyes,  under 
shaggy  brows,  glowed  with  a  smoldering  fire. 
He  was  rather  silent  in  society  ;  his  delivery  in 
debate  was  grave  and  weighty,  rather  than  fervid. 
His  oratory  was  massive  and  sometimes  even  pon 
derous.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  an  Amer 
ican  orator  of  to-day,  with  intellectual  abilities 
equal  to  Webster's — if  such  a  one  there  were — 
would  permit  himself  the  use  of  sonorous  and 
elaborate  pictures  like  the  famous  period  which 
follows:  "On  this  question  of  principle,  while 
actual  suffering  was  yet  afar  off,  they  raised  their 
flag  against  a  power,  to  which,  for  purposes  of 
foreign  conquest  and  subjugation,  Rome,  in  the 
height  of  her  glory,  is  not  to  be  compared ;  a 
power  which  has  dotted  over  the  surface  of  the 
whole  globe  with  her  possessions  and  military  posts, 
whose  morning  drum-beat,  following  the  sun  and 
keeping  company  with  the  hours,  circles  the  earth 
with  one  continuous  and  unbroken  strain  of  the 


ii4  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

martial  airs  of  England."  The  secret  of  this  kind 
of  oratory  has  been  lost.  The  present  generation 
distrusts  rhetorical  ornament,  and  likes  something 
swifter,  simpler,  and  more  familiar  in  its  speakers. 
But  every  thing,  in  declamation  of  this  sort,  de 
pends  on  the  way  in  which  it  is  done.  Webster 
did  it  supremely  well ;  a  smaller  man  would  mere 
ly  have  made  buncombe  of  it. 

Among  the  legal  orators  of  the  time  the  fore 
most  was  Rufus  Choate,  an  eloquent  pleader,  and, 
like  Webster,  a  United  States  Senator  from  Mas 
sachusetts.  Some  of  his  speeches,  though  exces 
sively  rhetorical,  have  literary  quality,  and  are 
nearly  as  effective  in  print  as  Webster's  own.  An 
other  Massachusetts  orator,  Edward  Everett,  who 
in  his  time  was  successively  professor  in  Harvard 
College,  Unitarian  minister  in  Boston,  editor  of  the 
North  American  Review,  member  of  both  houses  of 
Congress,  Minister  to  England,  Governor  of  his 
State,  and  President  of  Harvard,  was  a  speaker 
of  great  finish  and  elegance.  His  addresses  were 
mainly  of  the  memorial  and  anniversary  kind,  and 
were  rather  lectures  and  4>.  B.  K.  prolusions  than 
speeches.  Everett  was  an  instance  of  careful 
culture  bestowed  on  a  soil  of  no  very  great  natu 
ral  richness.  It  is  doubtful  whether  his  classical 
orations  on  Washington,  the  Republic,  Bunker 
Hill  Monument,  and  kindred  themes,  have  enough 
of  the  breath  of  life  in  them  to  preserve  them 
much  longer  in  recollection. 

New  England,  during  these  years,  did  not  take 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.      115 

that  leading  part  in  the  purely  literary  develop 
ment  of  the  country  which  it  afterward  assumed. 
It  had  no  names  to  match  against  those  of  Irving 
and  Cooper.  Drake  and  Halleck — slender  as  was 
their  performance  in  point  of  quantity — were  bet 
ter  poets  than  the  Boston  bards,  Charles  Sprague, 
whose  Shakespere  Ode,  delivered  at  the  Boston 
theater  in  1823,  was  locally  famous;  and  Richard 
Henry  Dana,  whose  longish  narrative  poem,  the 
Buccaneer,  1827,  once  had  admirers.  But  Boston 
has  at  no  time  been  without  a  serious  intellectual 
life  of  its  own,  nor  without  a  circle  of  highly  edu 
cated  men  of  literary  pursuits,  even  in  default  of 
great  geniuses.  The  North  American  Review, 
established  in  1815,  though  it  has  been  wittily  de 
scribed  as  "ponderously  revolving  through  space  " 
for  a  few  years  after  its  foundation,  did  not  exist 
in  an  absolute  vacuum,  but  was  scholarly,  if  some 
what  heavy.  Webster,  to  be  sure,  was  a  Massa 
chusetts  man — as  were  Everett  and  Choate — but 
his  triumphs  were  won  in  the  wider  field  of  national 
politics.  There  was,  however,  a  movement  at  this 
time  in  the  intellectual  life  of  Boston  and  Eastern 
Massachusetts,  which,  though  not  immediately  con 
tributory  to  the  finer  kinds  of  literature,  prepared 
the  way,  by  its  clarifying  and  stimulating  influences, 
for  the  eminent  writers  of  the  next  generation.  This 
was  the  Unitarian  revolt  against  Puritan  orthodoxy, 
in  which  William  Ellery  Channing  was  the  prin 
cipal  leader.  In  a  community  so  intensely  theo 
logical  .as  New  England  it  was  natural  that  any 


u6  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

new  movement  in  thought  should  find  its  point  of 
departure  in  the  churches.  Accordingly,  the  pro 
gressive  and  democratic  spirit  of  the  age,  which 
in  other  parts  of  the  country  took  other  shapes, 
assumed  in  Massachusetts  the  form  of  "  liberal 
Christianity."  Arminianism,  Socinianism,  and 
other  phases  of  anti-Trinitarian  doctrine,  had  been 
latent  in  some  of  the  Congregational  churches  of 
Massachusetts  for  a  number  of  years.  But  about 
1812  the  heresy  broke  out  openly,  and  within  a 
few  years  from  that  date  most  of  the  oldest  and 
wealthiest  church  societies  of  Boston  and  its 
vicinity  had  gone  over  to  Unitarianism,  and  Har 
vard  College  had  been  captured,  too.  In  the 
controversy  that  ensued,  and  which  was  carried 
on  in  numerous  books,  pamphlets,  sermons,  and 
periodicals,  there  were  eminent  disputants  on  both 
sides.  So  far  as  this  controversy  was  concerned 
with  the  theological  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  it  has 
no  place  in  a  history  of  literature.  But  the  issue 
went  far  beyond  that.  Channing  asserted  the  dig 
nity  of  human  nature  against  the  Calvinistic  doc 
trine  of  innate  depravity,  and  affirmed  the  rights 
of  human  reason  and  man's  capacity  to  judge  of 
God.  "We  must  start  in  religion  from  our  own 
souls,"  he  said.  And  in  his  Moral  Argument 
against  Calvinism,  1820,  he  wrote:  "Nothing  is 
gained  to  piety  by  degrading  human  nature,  for  in 
the  competency  of  this  nature  to  know  and  judge 
of  God  all  piety  has  its  foundation."  In  opposition 
to  Edwards's  doctrine  of  necessity,  he  emphasized 


THE  ERA  OF  NATION  \L  EXPANSION.     117 

the  freedom  of  the  will.  He  maintained  that  the 
Calvinistic  dogmas  of  original  sin,  foreordination, 
election  by  grace,  and  eternal  punishment  were 
inconsistent  with  the  divine  perfection,  and  made 
God  a  monster.  In  Channing's  view  the  great 
sanction  of  religious  truth  is  the  moral  sanction, 
is  its  agreement  with  the  laws  of  conscience.  He 
was  a  passionate  vindicator  of  the  liberty  of  the 
individual  not  only  as  against  political  oppression 
but  against  the  tyranny  of  public  opinion  over 
thought  and  conscience  :  "  We  were  made  for  free 
action.  This  alone  is  life,  and  enters  into  all  that 
is  good  and  great."  This  jealous  love  of  freedom 
inspired  all  that  he  did  and  wrote.  It  led  him  to 
join  the  Antislavery  party.  It  expressed  itself  in 
his  elaborate  arraignment  of  Napoleon  in  the  Uni 
tarian  organ,  the  Christian  Examiner,  for  1827-28; 
in  his  Remarks  on  Associations,  and  his  paper  On 
the  Character  and  Writings  of  John  Milton,  1826. 
This  was  his  most  considerable  contribution  to 
literary  criticism.  It  took  for  a  text  Milton's 
recently  discovered  Treatise  on  Christian  Doctrine 
— the  tendency  of  which  was  anti-Trinitarian — but 
it  began  with  a  general  defense  of  poetry  against 
'*  those  who  are  accustomed  to  speak  of  poetry  as 
light  reading."  This  would  now  seem  a  some 
what  superfluous  introduction  to  an  article  in  any 
American  review.  But  it  shows  the  nature  of  the 
milieu  through  which  the  liberal  movement  in 
Boston  had  to  make  its  way.  To  assert  the  dig 
nity  and  usefulness  of  the  beautiful  arts;  to  show 


nS  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

that  novels  and  plays  and  games  and  dances  were 
not  necessarily  sinful,  and  might  even  be  improv 
ing,  was  a  part  of  the  work  of  preparation  done  by 
the  Unitarians  in  Massachusetts.  People  in  other 
parts  of  the  country  had  gone  freely  to  the  theater 
or  the  ball.  Some  people  had  even  done  so  in 
Boston,  but  not  with  the  approval  of  the  clergy. 
The  narrow  traditions  of  provincial  Puritanism 
had  to  be  broken  and  a  more  cheerful  type  of 
religion  preached  before  polite  literature  in  Mas 
sachusetts  could  find  a  congenial  atmosphere.  In 
Channing's  Remarks  on  National  Literature,  re 
viewing  a  work  published  in  1823,  he  asks  the 
question,  "  Do  we  possess  what  may  be  called 
national  literature?"  and  answers  it,  by  implication 
at  least,  in  the  negative.  That  we  do  now  possess 
a  national  literature,  is  in  great  part  due  to  the 
influence  of  Channirg  and  his  associates,  although 
his  own  writings,  being  in  the  main  controversial 
and,  therefore,  of  temporary  interest,  may  not 
themselves  take  rank  among  the  permanent  treas 
ures  of  that  literature. 

1.  Washington  Irving.     Knickerbocker's  History 
of  New  York.     The  Sketch  Book.     Bracebridge 
Hall.    Tales  of  a  Traveler.    The  Alhambra.    Life 
of  Oliver  Goldsmith. 

2.  James  Fenimore  Cooper.    The  Spy.  The  Pilot, 
The  Red  Rover.    The  Leather-Stocking  Tales. 

3.  Daniel  Webster.     Great  Speeches  and  Ora 
tions.     Boston  :   Little,  Brown,  &  Co.     1879. 


THE  ERA  OF  NATIONAL  EXPANSION.     119 

4.  William    Ellery  Charming.      The    Character 
and  Writings   of    John    Milton.      The    Life    and 
Character     of     Napoleon     Bonaparte.        Slavery. 
[Vols.   I.  and    II.  of    the  Works    of  William    E. 
Channing.     Boston:   James  Munroe  &  Co.    1841.] 

5.  Joseph   Rodman   Drake.     The   Culprit  Fay. 
The  American  Flag.    [Selected  Poems.    New  York. 

1835.] 

6.  Fitz-Greene  Halleck.    Marco  Bozzaris.    Aln- 
wick  Castle.     On  the  Death  of  Drake.     [Poems. 
New  York      1827.] 


120  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
THE   CONCORD   WRITERS. 

1837-1861. 

THERE  has  been  but  one  movement  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  American  mind  which  has  given  to 
literature  a  group  of  writers  having  coherence 
enough  to  merit  the  name  of  a  school.  This  was 
the  great  humanitarian  movement,  or  series  of 
movements,  in  New  England,  which,  beginning  in 
the  Unitarianism  of  Channing,  ran  through  its  later 
phase  in  Transcendentalism,  and  spent  its  last 
strength  in  the  antislavery  agitation  and  the 
enthusiasms  of  the  Civil  War.  The  second  stage 
of  this  intellectual  and  social  revolt  was  Transcen 
dentalism,  of  which  Emerson  wrote,  in  1842:  "  The 
history  of  genius  and  of  religion  in  these  times 
will  be  the  history  of  this  tendency."  It  culmi 
nated  about  1840-41  in  the  establishment  of  the 
Dial  and  the  Brook  Farm  Community,  although 
Emerson  had  given  the  signal  a  few  years  before  in 
his  little  volume  entitled  Nature,  1836,  his  Phi- 
Beta  Kappa  address  at  Harvard  on  the  American 
Scholar,  1837,  and  his  address  in  1838  before  the 
Divinity  School  at  Cambridge.  Ralph  Waldo  Em 
erson  (1803-1882)  was  the  prophet  of  the  sect,  and 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  121 

Concord  was  its  Mecca;  but  the  influence  of  the 
new  ideas  was  not  confined  to  the  little  group  of 
professed  Transcendentalists ;  it  extended  to  all 
the  young  writers  within  reach,  who  struck  their 
roots  deeper  into  the  soil  that  it  had  loosened  and 
freshened.  We  owe  to  it,  in  great  measure,  not 
merely  Emerson,  Alcott,  Margaret  Fuller,  and 
Thoreau,  but  Hawthorne,  Lowell,  Whittier,  and 
Holmes. 

In  its  strictest  sense  Transcendentalism  was  a 
restatement  of  the  idealistic  philosophy,  and  an 
application  of  its  beliefs  to  religion,  nature,  and 
life.  But  in  a  looser  sense,  and  as  including  the 
more  outward  manifestations  which  drew  popular 
attention  most  strongly,  it  was  the  name  given  to 
that  spirit  of  dissent  and  protest,  of  universal  in 
quiry  and  experiment,  which  marked  the  third 
and  fourth  decades  of  this  century  in  America, 
and  especially  in  New  England.  The  movement 
was  contemporary  with  political  revolutions  in 
Europe  and  with  the  preaching  of  many  novel  gos 
pels  in  religion,  in  sociology,  in  science,  education, 
medicine,  and  hygiene.  New  sects  were  formed, 
like  the  Swedenborgians,  Universalists,  Spiritual 
ists,  Millerites,  Second  Adventists,  Shakers,  Mor 
mons,  and  Come-outers,  same  of  whom  believed 
in  trances,  miracles,  and  direct  revelations  from 
the  divine  Spirit;  others  in  the  quick  coming  of 
Christ,  as  deduced  from  the  opening  of  the  seals 
and  the  number  of  the  beast  in  the  Apocalypse ; 
and  still  others  in  the  reorganization  of  society  and 


122  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

of  the  family  on  a  different  basis.  New  systems 
of  education  were  tried,  suggested  by  the  writings 
of  the  Swiss  reformer,  Pestalozzi,  and  others. 
The  pseudo-sciences  of  mesmerism  and  of  phre 
nology,  as  taught  by  Gall  and  Spurzheim,  had 
numerous  followers.  In  medicine,  homeopathy, 
hydropathy,  and  what  Dr.  Holmes  calls  "kindred 
delusions,"  made  many  disciples.  Numbers  of 
persons,  influenced  by  the  doctrines  of  Graham 
and  other  vegetarians,  abjured  the  use  of  animal 
food,  as  injurious  not  only  to  health  but  to  a  finer 
spirituality.  Not  a  few  refused  to  vote  or  pay 
taxes.  The  writings  of  Fourier  and  St.  Simon 
were  translated,  and  societies  were  established 
where  co-operation  and  a  community  of  goods 
should  take  the  place  of  selfish  competition. 

About  the  year  1840  there  were  some  thirty  of 
these  "  phalansteries  "  in  America,  many  of  which 
had  their  organs  in  the  shape  of  weekly  or  monthly 
journals,  which  advocated  the  principle  of  Asso 
ciation.  The  best  known  of  these  was  probably 
the  Harbinger,  the  mouth -piece  of  the  famous 
Brook  Farm  Community,  which  was  founded  at 
West  Roxbury,  Mass.,  in  1841,  and  lasted  till  1847. 
The  head  man  of  Brook  Farm  was  George  Ripley, 
a  Unitarian  clergyman,  who  had  resigned  his  pul 
pit  in  Boston  to  go  into  the  movement,  and  who 
after  its  failure  became  and  remained  for  many 
years  literary  editor  of  the  New  York  Tribune. 
Among  his  associates  were  Charles  A.  Dana — now 
the  editor  of  the  Sun — Margaret  Fuller,  Nathaniel 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  123 

Hawthorne  and  others  not  unknown  to  fame. 
The  Harbinger,  which  ran  from  1845  to  1849 — two 
years  after  the  break  up  of  the  community — had 
among  its  contributors  many  who  were  not  Brook 
Farmers,  but  who  sympathized  more  or  less  with 
the  experiment.  Of  the  number  were  Horace 
Greeley,  Dr.  F.  H.  Hedge — who  did  so  much  to 
introduce  American  readers  to  German  literature 
— J.  S.  Dwight,  the  musical  critic,  C.  P.  Cranch, 
the  poet,  and  younger  men,  like  G.  W.  Curtis,  and 
T.  W.  Higginson.  A  reader  of  to-day,  looking 
into  an  odd  volume  of  the  Harbinger,  will  find  in 
it  some  stimulating  writing,  together  with  a  great 
deal  of  unintelligible  talk  about  "  Harmonic 
Unity,"  "  Love  Germination,"  and  other  matters 
now  fallen  silent.  The  most  important  literary 
result  of  this  experiment  at  "  plain  living  and  high 
thinking,"  with  its  queer  mixture  of  culture  and 
agriculture,  was  Hawthorne's  Blithedale  Romance, 
which  has  for  its  background  an  idealized  picture 
of  the  community  life,  whose  heroine,  Zenobia, 
has  touches  of  Margaret  Fuller  ;  and  whose  hero, 
with  his  hobby  of  prison  reform,  was  a  type  of 
the  one-idead  philanthropists  that  abounded  in 
such  an  environment.  Hawthorne's  attitude  was 
always  in  part  one  of  reserve  and  criticism,  an 
attitude  which  is  apparent  in  the  reminiscences  of 
Brook  Farm  in  his  American  Note  Books,  wherein 
he  speaks  with  a  certain  resentment  of  "  Miss 
Fuller's  transcendental  heifer,"  which  hooked 
the  other  cows,  and  was  evidently  to  Hawthorne's 


124  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

mind  not  unsymbolic  in  this  respect  of  Miss  Ful 
ler  herself. 

It  was  the  day  of  seers  and  "  Orphic  "  utter 
ances  ;  the  air  was  full  of  the  enthusiasm  of  hu 
manity  and  thick  with  philanthropic  projects  and 
plans  for  the  regeneration  of  the  universe.  The 
figure  of  the  wild-eyed,  long-haired  reformer — the 
man  with  a  panacea — the  "  crank  "  of  our  later 
terminology — became  a  familiar  one.  He  abound 
ed  at  non-resistance  conventions  and  meetings 
of  universal  peace  societies  and  of  woman's 
rights  associations.  The  movement,  had  its 
grotesque  aspects,  which  Lowell  has  described  in 
his  essay  on  Thoreau.  "  Bran  had  its  apostles 
and  the  pre-sartorial  simplicity  of  Adam  its  mar 
tyrs,  tailored  impromptu  from  the  tar-pot.  .  .  .  Not 
a  few  impecunious  zealots  abjured  the  use  of  money 
(unless  earned  by  other  people),  professing  to  live 
on  the  internal  revenues  of  the  spirit.  .  .  .  Com 
munities  were  established  where  every  thing  was 
to  be  common  but  common  sense." 

This  ferment  has  long  since  subsided  and  much 
of  what  was  then  seething  has  gone  off  in  vapor  or 
other  volatile  products.  But  some  very  solid  mat 
ters  also  have  been  precipitated,  some  crystals  of 
poetry  translucent,  symmetrical,  enduring.  The 
immediate  practical  outcome  was  disappointing, 
and  the  external  history  of  the  agitation  is  a 
record  of  failed  experiments,  spurious  sciences, 
Utopian  philosophies,  and  sects  founded  only  to 
dwindle  away  or  be  reabsorbed  into  some  form  of 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  125 

orthodoxy.  In  the  eyes  of  the  conservative,  or  the 
worldly-minded,  or  of  the  plain  people  who  could 
not  understand  the  enigmatic  utterances  of  the  re 
formers,  the  dangerous  or  ludicrous  sides  of  tran 
scendentalism  were  naturally  uppermost.  Never 
theless  the  movement  was  but  a  new  avatar  of  the 
old  Puritan  spirit;  its  moral  earnestness,  its  spirit 
uality,  its  tenderness  for  the  individual  con 
science.  Puritanism,  too,  in  its  day  had  run  into 
grotesque  extremes.  Emerson  bore  about  the 
same  relation  to  the  absurder  outcroppings  of 
transcendentalism  that  Milton  bore  to  the  New 
Lights,  Ranters,  Fifth  Monarchy  Men,  etc.,  of  his 
time.  There  is  in  him  that  mingling  of  idealism 
with  an  abiding  sanity,  and  even  a  Yankee  shrewd 
ness,  which  characterizes  the  race.  The  practical, 
inventive,  calculating,  money-getting  side  of  the 
Yankee  has  been  made  sufficiently  obvious.  But 
the  deep  heart  of  New  England  is  full  of  dreams, 
mysticism,  romance : 

"And  in  the  day  of  sacrifice, 

When  heroes  piled  the  pyre, 
The  dismal  Massachusetts  ice 

Burned  more  than  others'  fire." 

The  one  element  which  the  odd  and  eccentric 
developments  of  this  movement  shared  in  common 
with  the  real  philosophy  of  transcendentalism  was 
the  rejection  of  authority  and  the  appeal  to  the  pri 
vate  consciousness  as  the  sole  standard  of  truth  and 
right.  This  principle  certainly  lay  in  the  ethical 


126  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

systems  of  Kant  and  Fichte,  the  great  transcend- 
entalists  of  Germany.  It  had  been  strongly  as 
serted  by  Channing.  Nay,  it  was  the  starting 
point  of  Puritanism  itself,  which  had  drawn  away 
from  the  ceremonial  religion  of  the  English  Church 
and  by  its  Congregational  system  had  made  each 
church  society  independent  in  doctrine  and  wor 
ship.  And  although  Puritan  orthodoxy  in  New 
England  had  grown  rigid  and  dogmatic,  it  had 
never  used  the  weapons  of  obscurantism.  By  en 
couraging  education  to  the  utmost  it  had  shown 
its  willingness  to  submit  its  beliefs  to  the  fullest 
discussion  and  had  put  into  the  hands  of  dissent 
the  means  with  which  to  attack  them. 

In  its  theological  aspect  transcendentalism  was 
a  departure  from  conservative  Unitarianism,  as 
that  had  been  from  Calvinism.  From  Edwards  to 
Channing,  from  Channing  to  Emerson  and  Theo 
dore  Parker,  there  was  a  natural  and  logical  unfold 
ing.  Not  logical  in  the  sense  that  Channing  ac 
cepted  Edwards'  premises  and  pushed  them  out  to 
their  conclusions,  or  that  Parker  accepted  all  of 
Channing's  premises,  but  in  the  sense  that  the  rigid 
pushing  out  of  Edwards'  premises  into  their  con 
clusions  by  himself  and  his  followers  had  brought 
about  a  moral  reductio  ad  absurdum  and  a  state  of 
opinion  against  which  Channing  rebelled;  and 
that  Channing,  as  it  seemed  to  Parker,  stopped 
short  in  the  carrying  out  of  his  own  principles. 
Thus  the  "Channing  Unitarians,"  while  denying 
that  Christ  was  God,  had  held  that  he  was  of  di- 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  127 

vine  nature,  was  the  Son  of  God,  and  had  existed 
before  he  came  into  the  world.  While  rejecting 
the  doctrine  of  the  "  Vicarious  sacrifice "  they 
maintained  that  Christ  was  a  mediator  and  inter 
cessor,  and  that  his  supernatural  nature  was  testi 
fied  by  miracles.  For  Parker  and  Emerson  it  was 
easy  to  take  the  step  to  the  assertion  that  Christ 
was  a  good  and  great  man,  divine  only  in  the  sense 
that  God  possessed  him  more  fully  than  any  other 
man  known  in  history  ;  that  it  was  his  preaching 
and  example  that  brought  salvation  to  men,  and 
not  any  special  mediation  or  intercession,  and  that 
his  own  words  and  acts,  and  not  miracles,  are 
the  only  and  the  sufficient  witness  to  his  mission. 
In  the  view  of  the  transcendentalists  Christ  was  as 
human  as  Buddha,  Socrates  or  Confucius,  and  the 
Bible  was  but  one  among  the  "  Ethnical  Script 
ures  "  or  sacred  writings  of  the  peoples,  passages 
from  which  were  published  in  the  transcendental 
organ,  the  Dial.  As  against  these  new  views 
Channing  Unitarianism  occupied  already  a  con 
servative  position.  The  Unitarians  as  a  body 
had  never  been  very  numerous  outside  of 
Eastern  Massachusets.  They  had  a  few  churches 
in  New  York  and  in  the  lirger  cities  and 
towns  elsewhere,  but  the  sect,  as  such,  was  a  local 
one.  Orthodoxy  made  a  sturdy  fight  against  the 
heresy,  under  leaders  like  Leonard  Woods  and 
Moses  Stuart,  of  Andover,  and  Lyman  Beecher, 
of  Connecticut.  In  the  neighboring  State  of  Con 
necticut,  for  example,  there  was  until  lately,  for 


128  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

a  period  of  several  years,  no  distinctly  Unitarian 
congregation  worshiping  in  a  church  edifice  of  its 
own.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Unitarians  claimed, 
with  justice,  that  their  opinions  had  to  a  great 
extent  modified  the  theology  of  the  orthodox 
churches.  The  writings  of  Horace  Bushnell,  of 
Hartford,  one  of  the  most  eminent  Congregational 
divines,  approach  Unitarianism  in  their  interpreta 
tion  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement;  and  the 
"  progressive  orthodoxy  "  of  Andover  is  certainly 
not  the  Calvinism  of  Thomas  Hooker  or  of  Jona 
than  Edwards.  But  it  seemed  to  the  transcend- 
entalists  that  conservative  Unitarianism  was  too 
negative  and  "cultured,"  and  Margaret  Fuller 
complained  of  the  coldness  of  the  Boston  pulpits. 
While  contrariwise  the  central  thought  of  tran 
scendentalism,  that  the  soul  has  an  immediate 
connection  with  God,  was  pronounced  by  Dr. 
Channing  a  "crude  speculation."  This  was  the 
thought  of  Emerson's  address  in  1838  before  the 
Cambridge  Divinity  School,  and  it  was  at  once 
made  the  object  of  attack  by  conservative  Uni 
tarians  like  Henry  Ware  and  Andrews  Norton. 
The  latter  in  an  address  before  the  same  audience, 
on  the  Latest  Form  of  Infidelity,  said  :  "  Nothing 
is  left  that  can  be  called  Christianity  if  its  miracu 
lous  character  be  denied.  .  .  .  There  can  be  no 
intuition,  no  direct  perception  of  the  truth  of 
Christianity."  And  in  a  pamphlet  supporting  the 
same  side  of  the  question  he  added  :  "  It  is  not  an 
intelligible  error  but  a  mere  absurdity  to  maintain 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  129 

that  we  are  conscious,  or  have  an  intuitive  knowl 
edge,  of  the  being  of  God,  of  our  own  immortality 
...  or  of  any  other  fact  of  religion."  Ripley 
and  Parker  replied  in  Emerson's  defense;  but 
Emerson  himself  would  never  be  drawn  into  con 
troversy.  He  said  that  he  could  not  argue.  He 
announced  truths  ;  his  method  was  that  of  the  seer, 
not  of  the  disputant.  In  1832  Emerson,  who  was 
a  Unitarian  clergyman,  and  descended  from  eight 
generations  of  clergymen,  had  resigned  the  pas 
torate  of  the  Second  Church  of  Boston  because 
he  could  not  conscientiously  administer  the  sacra 
ment  of  the  communion — which  he  regarded  as  a 
mere  act  of  commemoration — in  the  sense  in  which 
it  was*  understood  by  his  parishioners.  Thence 
forth,  though  he  sometimes  occupied  Unitarian 
pulpits,  and  was,  indeed,  all  his  life  a  kind  of  "lay 
preacher,"  he  never  assumed  the  pastorate  of  a 
church.  The  representative  of  transcendentalism 
in  the  pulpit  was  Theodore  Parker,  an  eloquent 
preacher,  an  eager  debater  and  a  prolific  writer  on 
many  subjects,  whose  collected  works  fill  fourteen 
volumes.  Parker  was  a  man  of  strongly  human 
traits,  passionate,  independent,  intensely  relig 
ious,  but  intensely  radical,  who  made  for  him 
self  a  large  personal  following.  The  more  ad 
vanced  wing  of  the  Unitarians  were  called,  after 
him,  "  Parkerites."  Many  of  the  Unitarian 
churches  refused  to  "  fellowship  "  with  him  ;  and 
the  large  congregation,  or  audience,  which  as 
sembled  in  Music  Hall  to  hear  his  sermons  was 


130  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

stigmatized  as  a  "  boisterous  assembly "  which 
came  to  hear  Parker  preach  irreligion. 

It  has  been  said  that,  on  its  philosophical  side. 
New  England  transcendentalism  was  a  restate 
ment  of  idealism.  The  impulse  came  from  Ger 
many,  from  the  philosophical  writings  of  Kant, 
Fichte,  Jacobi,  and  Schelling,  and  from  the  works 
of  Coleridge  and  Carlyle,  who  had  domesticated 
German  thought  in  England.  In  Channing's  Re 
marks  on  a  National  Literature,  quoted  in  our  last 
chapter,  the  essayist  urged  that  our  scholars  should 
study  the  authors  of  France  and  Germany  as  one 
means  of  emancipating  American  letters  from  a 
slavish  dependence  on  British  literature.  And 
in  fact  German  literature  began,  not  long  after, 
to  be  eagerly  studied  in  New  England.  Emerson 
published  an  American  edition  of  Carlyle's  Mis 
cellanies,  including  his  essays  on  German  writers 
that  had  appeared  in  England  between  1822  and 
1830.  In  1838  Ripley  began  to  publish  Specimens 
of  Foreign  Standard  Literature,  which  extended 
to  fourteen  volumes.  In  his  work  of  translating 
and  supplying  introductions  to  the  matter  selected 
he  was  helped  by  Ripley,  Margaret  Fuller,  John 
S.  Dwight  and  others  who  had  more  or  less  con 
nection  with  the  transcendental  movement. 

The  definition  of  the  new  faith  given  by  Emer 
son  in  his  lecture  on  the  Transcendentalist,  1842,  is 
as  follows:  "What  is  popularly  called  transcend 
entalism  among  us  is  idealism.  .  .  .  The  idealism 
of  the  present  day  acquired  the  name  of  transcend- 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  131 

ental  from  the  use  of  that  term  by  Immanuel 
Kant,  who  replied  to  the  skeptical  philosophy  of 
Locke,  which  insisted  that  there  was  nothing  in 
the  intellect  which  was  not  previously  in  the  ex 
perience  of  the  senses,  by  showing  that  there  was  a 
very  important  class  of  ideas,  or  imperative  forms, 
which  did  not  come  by  experience,  but  through 
which  experience  was  acquired  ;  that  these  were 
intuitions  of  the  mind  itself,  and  he  denominated 
them  transcendental  forms."  Idealism  denies  the 
independent  existence  of  matter.  Transcendent 
alism  claims  for  the  innate  ideas  of  God  and  the 
soul  a  higher  assurance  of  reality  than  for  the 
knowledge  of  the  outside  world  derived  through 
the  senses.  Emerson  shares  the  "noble  doubt" 
of  idealism.  He  calls  the  universe  a  shade,  a 
dream,  "  this  great  apparition."  "  It  is  a  sufficient 
account  of  that  appearance  we  call  the  world,"  he 
wrote  in  Nature,  "  that  God  will  teach  a  human 
mind,  and  so  makes  it  the  receiver  of  a  certain 
number  of  congruent  sensations  which  we  call  sun 
and  moon,  man  and  woman,  house  and  trade.  In 
my  utter  impotence  to  test  the  authenticity  of  the 
report  of  my  senses,  to  know  whether  the  im 
pressions  on  me  correspond  with  outlying  objects, 
what  difference  does  it  make  whether  Orion  is  up 
there  in  heaven  or  some  god  paints  the  image  in 
the  firmament  of  the  soul?"  On  the  other  hand 
our  evidence  of  the  existence  of  God  and  of  our 
own  souls,  and  our  knowledge  of  right  and  wrong, 
are  immediate,  and  are  independent  of  the  senses. 


132  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

We  are  in  direct  communication  with  the  ''Over- 
soul,"  the  infinite  Spirit.  "The  soul  in  man  is 
the  background  of  our  being — an  immensity  not 
possessed,  that  cannot  be  possessed."  "  From 
within  or  from  behind  a  light  shines  through  us 
upon  things,  and  makes  us  aware  that  we  are 
nothing,  but  the  light  is  all."  Revelation  is  "an 
influx  of  the  Divine  mind  into  our  mind.  It  is  an 
ebb  of  the  individual  rivuletr  before  the  flowing 
surges  of  the  sea  of  life."  In  moods  of  exaltation, 
and  especially  in  the  presence  of  nature,  this  con 
tact  of  the  individual  soul  with  the  absolute  is  felt. 
"All  mean  egotism  vanishes.  I  become  a  trans 
parent  eyeball  ;  I  am  nothing  ;  I  see  all  ;  the  cur 
rents  of  the  Universal  Being  circulate  through  me; 
I  am  part  and  particle  of  God."  The  existence 
and  attributes  of  God  are  not  deducible  from  his 
tory  or  from  natural  theology,  but  are  thus  directly 
given  us  in  consciousness.  In  his  essay  on  the 
Transcendentalist,  Emerson  says:  "His  experience 
inclines  him  to  behold  the  procession  of  facts  you 
call  the  world  as  flowing  perpetually  outward  from 
an  invisible,  unsounded  center  in  himself;  center 
alike  of  him  and  of  them  and  necessitating  him  to 
regard  all  things  as  having  a  subjective  or  relative 
existence  —  relative  to  that  aforesaid  Unknown 
Center  of  him.  There  is  no  bar  or  wall  in  the 
soul  where  man,  the  effect,  ceases,  and  God,  the 
cause,  begins.  We  lie  open  on  one  side  to  the 
deeps  of  spiritual  nature,  to  the  attributes  of 
God." 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  133 

Emerson's  point  of  view,  though  familiar  to 
students  of  philosophy,  is  strange  to  the  popular 
understanding,  and  hence  has  arisen  the  complaint 
of  his  obscurity.  Moreover,  he  apprehended  and 
expressed  these  ideas  as  a  poet,  in  figurative  and 
emotional  language,  and  not  as  a  metaphysician,  in 
a  formulated  statement.  His  own  position  in  rela 
tion  to  systematic  philosophers  is  described  in 
what  he  says  of  Plato,  in  his  series  of  sketches  en 
titled  Representative  Men,  1850  :  "  He  has  not  a 
system.  The  dearest  disciples  and  defenders  are 
at  fault.  He  attempted  a  theory  of  the  universe, 
and  his  theory  is  not  complete  or  self-evident. 
One  man  thinks  he  means  this,  and  another  that ; 
he  has  said  one  thing  in  one  place,  and  the  reverse 
of  it  in  another  place."  It  happens,  therefore,  that, 
to  many  students  of  more  formal  philosophies 
Emerson's  meaning  seems  elusive,  and  he  appears 
to  write  from  temporary  moods  and  to  contradict 
himself.  Had  he  attempted  a  reasoned  exposition 
of  the  transcendental  philosophy,  instead  of  writ 
ing  essays  and  poems,  he  might  have  added  one 
more  to  the  number  of  system-mongers  ;  but  he 
would  not  have  taken  that  significant  place  which 
he  occupies  in  the  general  literature  of  the  time, 
nor  exerted  that  wide  influence  upon  younger 
writers  which  has  been  one  of  the  stimulating 
forces  in  American  thought.  It  was  because  Em 
erson  was  a  poet  that  he  is  our  Emerson.  And 
yet  it  would  be  impossible  to  disentangle  his  pe 
culiar  philosophical  ideas  from  the  body  of  his 


134    '  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

writings  and  to  leave  the  latter  to  stand  upon  their 
merits  as  literature  merely.  He  is  the  poet  of 
certain  high  abstractions,  and  his  religion  is  central 
to  all  his  work — excepting,  perhaps,  his  English 
Traits,  1856,  an  acute  study  of  national  charac 
teristics,  and  a  few  of  his  essays  and  verses,  which 
are  independent  of  any  particular  philosophical 
standpoint. 

When  Emerson  resigned  his  parish  in  1832  he 
made  a  short  trip  to  Europe,  where  he  visited  Car- 
lyle  at  Craigenputtoch,  and  Landor  at  Florence.  On 
his  return  he  retired  to  his  birthplace,  the  village 
of  Concord,  Massachusetts, and  settled  down  among 
his  books  and  his  fields,  becoming  a  sort  of  "glori 
fied  farmer,"  but  issuing  frequently  from  his  retire 
ment  to  instruct  and  delight  audiences  of  thought 
ful  people  at  Boston  and  at  other  points  all  through 
the  country.  Emerson  was  the  perfection  of  a  ly- 
ceum  lecturer.  His  manner  was  quiet  but  forcible* 
his  voice  of  charming  quality,  and  his  enunciation 
clean  cut  and  refined.  The  sentence  was  his  unit 
in  composition.  His  lectures  seemed  to  begin  any 
where  and  to  end  anywhere,  and  to  resemble  strings 
of  exquisitely  polished  sayings  rather  than  continu 
ous  discourses.  His  printed  essays,  with  unimpor 
tant  exceptions,  were  first  written  and  delivered  as 
lectures.  In  1836  he  published  his  first  bookjA^/- 
ure,  which  remains  the  most  systematic  statement 
of  his  philosophy.  It  opened  a  fresh  spring-head  in 
American  thought,  and  the  words  of  its  introduc 
tion  announced  that  its  author  had  broken  with 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  135 

the  past.  "Why  should  not  we  also  enjoy  an  orig 
inal  relation  to  the  universe  ?  Why  should  not  we 
have  a  poetry  and  philosophy  of  insight  and  not 
of  tradition,  and  a  religion  by  revelation  to  us  and 
not  the  history  of  theirs?" 

It  took  eleven  years  to  sell  five  hundred  copies 
of  this  little  book.  But  the  year  following  its  pub 
lication  the  remarkable  Phi  Beta  Kappa  address 
at  Cambridge,  on  the  American  Scholar,  electrified 
the  little  public  of  the  university.  This  is  de 
scribed  by  Lowell  as  "an  event  without  any  former 
parallel  in  our  literary  annals,  a  scene  to  be  always 
treasured  in  the  memory  for  its  picturesqueness 
and  its  inspiration.  What  crowded  and  breathless 
aisles,  what  windows  clustering  with  eager  heads, 
what  grim  silence  of  foregone  dissent!  "  To  Con 
cord  came  many  kindred  spirits,  drawn  by  Emer 
son's  magnetic  attraction.  Thither  came,  from 
Connecticut,  Amos  Bronson  Alcott,  born  a  few 
years  before  Emerson,  whom  he  outlived;  a  quaint 
and  benignant  figure,  a  visionary  and  a  mystic 
even  among  the  trascendentalists  themselves,  and 
one  who  lived  in  unworldly  simplicity  the  life  of 
the  soul.  Alcott  had  taught  school  at  Cheshire, 
Conn.,  and  afterward  at  Boston  on  an  original 
plan — compelling  his  scholars,  for  example,  to  flog 
him,  when  they  did  wrong,  instead  of  taking  a  flog 
ging  themselves.  The  experiment  was  successful 
until  his  Conversations  on  the  Gospels,  in  Boston, 
and  his  insistence  upon  admitting  colored  children 
to  his  benches,  offended  conservative  opinion  and 


136  AMKRU:A\   LITERATURE. 

broke  up  his  school.  Alcott  renounced  the  eating 
of  animal  food  in  1835.  He  believed  in  the  union 
of  thought  and  manual  labor,  and  supported  him 
self  for  some  years  by  the  work  of  his  hands,  gar 
dening,  cutting  wood,  etc.  He  traveled  into  the 
West  and  elsewhere,  holding  conversations  on  phi 
losophy,  education,  and  religion.  He  set  up  a 
little  community  at  the  village  of  Harvard,  which 
was  rather  less  successful  than  Brook  Farm,  and  he 
contributed  Orphic  Sayings  to  the  Dial,  which  were 
harder  for  the  exoteric  to  understand  than  even 
Emerson's  Brahma  or  the  Over-soul. 

Thither  came,  also,  Sarah  Margaret  Fuller,  the 
most  intellectual  woman  of  her  time  in  America, 
an  eager  student  of  Greek  and  German  litera 
ture  and  an  ardent  seeker  after  the  True,  the 
Good,  and  the  Beautiful.  She  threw  herself  into 
many  causes — temperance,  antislavery,  and  the 
higher  education  of  women.  Her  brilliant  con 
versation  classes  in  Boston  attracted  many 
"minds"  of  her  own  sex.  Subsequently,  as  lit 
erary  editor  of  the  New  York  Tribune,  she  fur 
nished  a  wider  public  with  reviews  and  book- 
notices  of  great  ability.  She  took  part  in  the 
Brook  Farm  experiment,  and  she  edited  the  Dial 
for  a  time,  contributing  to  it  the  papers  afterward 
expanded  into  her  most  considerable  book,  Woman 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century.  In  1846  she  went 
abroad,  and  at  Rome  took  part  in  the  revolution 
ary  movement  of  Mazzini,  having  charge  of  one  of 
the  hospitals  during  the  siege  of  the  city  by  the 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  137 

French.  In  1847  she  married  an  impecunious 
Italian  nobleman,  the  Marquis  Ossoli.  In  1850 
the  ship  on  which  she  was  returning  to  America, 
with  her  husband  and  child,  was  wrecked  on  Fire 
Island  beach  and  all  three  were  lost.  Margaret 
Fuller's  collected  writings  are  somewhat  disap 
pointing,  being  mainly  of  temporary  interest.  She 
lives  less  through  her  books  than  through  the 
memoirs  of  her  friends,  Emerson,  James  Freeman 
Clarke,  T.  W.  Higginson,  and  others  who  knew  her 
as  a  personal  influence.  Her  strenuous  and  rather 
overbearing  individuality  made  an  impression  not 
altogether  agreeable  upon  many  of  her  contem 
poraries.  Lowell  introduced  a  caricature  of  her 
as  "  Miranda  "  into  his  Fable  for  Critics,  and 
Hawthorne's  caustic  sketch  of  her,  preserved  in 
the  biography  written  by  his  son,  has  given  great 
offense  to  her  admirers.  "Such  a  determination 
to  eat  this  huge  universe!  "  was  Carlyle's  charac 
teristic  comment  on  her  appetite  for  knowledge 
and  aspirations  after  perfection. 

To  Concord  also  came  Nathaniel  Hawthorne, 
who  took  up  his  residence  there  first  at  the 
"Old  Manse,"  and  afterward  at  "The  Wayside." 
Though  naturally  an  idealist,  he  said  that  he 
came  too  late  to  Concord  to  fall  decidedly  under 
Emerson's  influence.  Of  that  he  would  have 
stood  in  little  danger  even  had  he  come  earlier. 
He  appreciated  the  deep  and  subtle  quality  of 
Emerson's  imagination,  but  his  own  shy  genius 
always  jealously  guarded  its  independence  and  re- 


138  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

sented  the  too  close  approaches  of  an  alien  mind. 
Among  the  native  disciples  of  Emerson  at  Con 
cord  the  most  noteworthy  were  Henry  Thoreau, 
and  his  friend  and  biographer,  William  Ellery 
Channing,  Jr.,  a  nephew  of  the  great  Charming. 
Channing  was  a  contributor  to  the  Dial,  and  he 
published  a  volume  of  poems  which  elicited  a 
fiercely  contemptuous  review  from  Edgar  Poe. 
Though  disfigured  by  affectation  and  obscurity, 
many  of  Channing's  verses  were  distinguished  by 
true  poetic  feeling,  and  the  last  line  of  his  little 
piece,  A  Pocfs  Hope, 

"  If  my  bark  sink  'tis  to  another  sea," 

has  taken  a  permanent  place  in  the  literature  of 
transcendentalism. 

The  private  organ  of  the  transcendentalists  was 
the  Dial,  a  quarterly  magazine,  published  from 
1840  to  1844,  and  edited  by  Emerson  and  Mar 
garet  Fuller.  Among  its  contributors,  besides 
those  already  mentioned,  were  Ripley,  Thoreau, 
Parker,  James  Freeman  Clarke,  Charles  A.  Dana, 
John  S.  Dwight,  C.  P.  Cranch,  Charles  Emerson 
and  William  H.  Channing,  another  nephew  of  Dr. 
Channing.  It  contained,  along  with  a  good  deal 
of  rubbish,  some  of  the  best  poetry  and  prose  that 
have  been  published  in  America.  The  most  last 
ing  part  of  its  contents  were  the  contributions  of 
Emerson  and  Thoreau.  But  even  as  a  whole,  it 
is  so  unique  a  way-mark  in  the  history  of  our  lit 
erature  that  all  its  four  volumes — copies  of  which 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  139 

had  become  scarce — have  been  recently  reprinted 
in  answer  to  a  demand  certainly  very  unusual  in 
the  case  of  an  extinct  periodical. 

From  time  to  time  Emerson  collected  and  pub 
lished  his  lectures  under  various  titles.  A  first 
series  of  Essays  came  out  in  1841,  and  a  second  in 
1844  ;  the  Conduct  of  Life  in  1860,  Society  and  Soli 
tude  in  1870,  Letters  and  Social  Aims,  in  1876,  and 
the  Fortune  of  the  Republic  in  1878.  In  1847  he 
issued  a  volume  of  Poems,  and  1865  Mayday  and 
Other  Poems.  These  writings,  as  a  whole,  were 
variations  on  a  single  theme,  expansions  and 
illustrations  of  the  philosophy  set  forth  in  Nature, 
and  his  early  addresses.  They  were  strikingly 
original,  rich  in  thought,  filled  with  wisdom,  with 
lofty  morality  and  spiritual  religion.  Emerson,  said 
Lowell,  first  "  cut  the  cable  that  bound  us  to  En 
glish  thought  and  gave  us  a  chance  at  the  dangers 
and  glories  of  blue  water."  Nevertheless,  as  it 
used  to  be  the  fashion  to  find  an  English  analogue 
for  every  American  writer,  so  that  Cooper  was 
called  the  American  Scott,  and  Mrs.  Sigourney 
was  described  as  the  Hemans  of  America,  a  well- 
worn  critical  tradition  has  coupled  Emerson  with 
Carlyle.  That  his  mind  received  a  nudge  from 
Carlyle's  early  essays  and  from  Sartor  Resartus  is 
beyond  a  doubt.  They  were  life-long  friends  and 
correspondents,  and  Emerson's  Representative  Men 
is,  in  some  sort,  a  counterpart  of  Carlyle's  Hero 
Worship.  But  in  temper  and  style  the  two  writers 
were  widely  different.  Carlyle's  pessimism  and  dis- 


140  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

satisfaction  with  the  general  drift  of  things  gained 
upon  him  more  and  more,  while  Emerson  was  a 
consistent  optimist  to  the  end.  The  last  of  his  writ 
ings  published  during  his  life-time,  the  Fortune  of 
the  Republic,  contrasts  strangely  in  its  hopefulness 
with  the  desperation  of  Carlyle's  later  utterances. 
Even  in  presence  of  the  doubt  as  to  man's  per 
sonal  immortality  he  takes  refuge  in  a  high  and 
stoical  faith.  4<  I  think  all  sound  minds  rest  on  a 
certain  preliminary  conviction,  namely  :  that  if  it 
be  best  that  conscious  personal  life  shall  continue 
it  will  continue,  and  if  not  best,  then  it  will  not ; 
and  we,  if  we  saw  the  whole,  should  of  course  see 
that  it  was  better  so."  It  is  this  conviction  that 
gives  to  Emerson's  writings  their  serenity  and  their 
tonic  quality  at  the  same  time  that  it  narrows  the 
range  of  his  dealings  with  life.  As  the  idealist  de 
clines  to  cross-examine  those  facts  which  he  re 
gards  as  merely  phenomenal,  and  looks  upon  this 
outward  face  of  things  as  upon  a  mask  not  worthy 
to  dismay  the  fixed  soul,  so  the  optimist  turns  away 
his  eyes  from  the  evil  which  -he  disposes  of  as 
merely  negative,  as  the  shadow  of  the  good.  Haw 
thorne's  interest  in  the  problem  of  sin  finds  little 
place  in  Emerson's  philosophy.  Passion  comes 
not  nigh  him  and  Faust  disturbs  him  with  its  dis- 
agreeableness.  Pessimism  is  to  him  "  the  only 
skepticism." 

The  greatest  literature  is  that  which  is  most 
broadly  human,  or,  in  other  words,  that  which  will 
square  best  with  all  philosophies.  But  Emerson's 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  141 

genius  was  interpretive  rather  than  constructive. 
The  poet  dwells  in  the  cheerful  world  of  phe 
nomena.  He  is  most  the  poet  who  realizes  most 
intensely  the  good  and  the  bad  of  human  life. 
But  Idealism  makes  experience  shadowy  and  sub 
ordinates  action  to  contemplation.  To  it  the  cities 
of  men,  with  their  "frivolous  populations," 

"...   are  but  sailing  foam-bells 
Along  thought's  causing  stream." 

Shakespere  does  not  forget  that  the  world  will 
one  day  vanish  "  like  the  baseless  fabric  of  a 
vision,"  and  that  we  ourselves  are  ;' such  stuff  as 
dreams  are  made  on;"  but  this  is  not  the  mood  in 
which  he  dwells.  Again:  while  it  is  for  the  phi 
losopher  to  reduce  variety  to  unity,  it  is  the  poet's 
task  to  detect  the  manifold  under  uniformity.  In 
the  great  creative  poets,  in  Shakespere  and  Dante 
and  Goethe,  how  infinite  the  swarm  of  persons, 
the  multitude  of  forms!  But  with  Emerson  the 
type  is  important,  the  common  element.  "  In  youth 
we  are  mad  for  persons.  But  the  larger  experi 
ence  of  man  discovers  the  identical  nature  appear 
ing  through  them  all."  "The  same— the  same!" 
he  exclaims  in  his  essay  on  Plato.  "Friend  and 
foe  are  of  one  stuff;  the  plowman,  the  plow  and  the 
furrow  are  of  one  stuff."  And  this  is  the  thought 
in  Brahma : 

"  They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out; 

When  me  they  fly  I  am  ihe  wings: 
I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt, 

And  I  the  hymn  the  Brahmin  sings." 


142  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

It  is  not  easy  to  fancy  a  writer  who  holds  this 
altitude  toward  "persons  "  descending  to  the  com 
position  of  a  novel  or  a  play.  Emerson  showed, 
indeed,  a  fine  power  of  character  analysis  in  his 
English  Traits  and  Representative  Men  and  in  his 
memoirs  of  Thoreau  and  Margaret  Fuller.  There 
is  even  a  sort  of  dramatic  humor  in  his  portrait  of 
Socrates.  But  upon  the  whole  he  stands  midway 
between  constructive  artists,  whose  instinct  it  is  to 
tell  a  story  or  sing  a  song,  and  philosophers,  like 
Schelling,  who  give  poetic  expression  to  a  system 
of  thought.  He  belongs  to  the  class  of  minds  of 
which  Sir  Thomas  Browne  is  the  best  English 
example.  He  set  a  high  value  upon  Browne, 
to  whose  style  his  own,  though  far  more  senten 
tious,  bears  a  resemblance.  Browne's  saying,  for 
example,  "All  things  are  artificial,  for  nature  is  the 
art  of  God,"  sounds  like  Emerson,  whose  work 
manship,  for  the  rest,  in  his  prose  essays  was  ex 
ceedingly  fine  and  close.  He  was  not  afraid  to  be 
homely  and  racy  in  expressing  thought  of  the 
highest  spirituality.  "Hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star" 
is  a  good  instance  of  his  favorite  manner. 

Emerson's  verse  often  seems  careless  in  tech 
nique.  Most  of  his  pieces  are  scrappy  and  have  the 
air  of  runic  rimes,  or  little  oracular  "voicings" — as 
they  say  in  Concord — in  rhythmic  shape,  of  single 
thoughts  on  "Worship,"  "Character,"  " Heroism," 
"  Art,"  "  Politics,"  "  Culture,"  etc.  The  content  is 
the  important  thing,  and  the  form  is  too  frequently 
awkward  or  bald.  Sometimes,  indeed,  in  the  clear- 


THE  CoiNcoRD  WRITERS.  143 

obscure  of  Emerson's  poetry  the  deep  wisdom  of 
the  thought  finds  its  most  natural  expression  in 
the  imaginative  simplicity  of  the  language.  But 
though  this  artlessness  in  him  became  too  fre 
quently  in  his  imitators,  like  Thoreau  and  Ellery 
Channing,  an  obtruded  simplicity,  among  his  own 
poems  are  many  that  leave  nothing  to  be  desired 
in  point  of  wording  and  of  verse.  His  Hymn  Sung 
at  the  Completion  of  the  Concord  Monument,  in  1836, 
is  the  perfect  model  of  an  occasional  poem.  Its 
lines  were  on  every  one's  lips  at  the  time  of  the 
centennial  celebrations  in  1876,  and  "  the  shot 
heard  round  the  world  "  has  hardly  echoed  farther 
than  the  song  which  chronicled  it.  Equally  cur 
rent  is  the  stanza  from  Voluntaries : 

"  So  nigh  is  grandeur  to  our  dust, 

So  near  is  God  to  man, 
When  Duty  whispers  low,  "  Thou  must,' 

The  youth  replies,  '  I  can.'  " 

So,  too,  the  famous  lines  from  the  Problem  : 

11  The  hand  that  rounded  Peter's  dome, 
And  groined  the  aisles  of  Christian  Rome, 
Wrought  in  a  sad  sincerity. 
Himself  from  God  he  could  not  free; 
He  builded  better  than  he  knew; 
The  Conscious  stone  to  beauty  grew." 

The  most  noteworthy  of  Emerson's  pupils  was 
Henry  David  Thoreau,  "the  poet -naturalist." 
After  his  graduation  from  Harvard  College,  in 
1837,  Thoreau  engaged  in  school  teaching  and  in 


144  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  manufacture  of  lead-pencils,  but  soon  gave  up 
all  regular  business  and  devoted  himself  to  walk 
ing,  reading,  and  the  study  of  nature.  He  was  at 
one  time  private  tutor  in  a  family  on  Staten  Island, 
and  he  supported  himself  for  a  season  by  doing 
odd  jobs  in  land  surveying  for  the  farmers  about 
Concord.  In  1845  he  built,  with  his  own  hands, 
a  small  cabin  on  the  banks  of  Walden  Pond,  near- 
Concord,  and  lived  there  in  seclusion  for  two 
years.  His  expenses  during  these  years  were  nine 
centra  day,  and  he  gave  an  account  of  his  experi 
ment  in  his  most  characteristic  book,  Walden, 
published  in  1854.  His  Week  on  the  Concord  and 
Merrimac  Rivers  appeared  in  1849.  From  time 
to  time  he  went  farther  afield,  and  his  journeys 
were  reported  in  Cape  Cod,  the  Maine  Woods,  Ex 
cursions,  and  a  Yankee  in  Canada,  all  of  which,  as 
well  as  a  volume  of  Letter-sand  Early  Spring  in 
Massachusetts,  have  been  given  to  the  public  since 
his  death,  which  happened  in  1862.  No  one  has 
lived  so  close  to  nature,  and  written  of  it  so  inti 
mately,  as  Thoreau.  His  life  was  a  lesson  in  econ 
omy  and  a  sermon  on  Emerson's  text,  "  Lessen 
your  denominator."  He  wished  to  reduce  exist 
ence  to  the  simplest  terms — to 

"  live  all  alone 
Close  to  the  bone, 
And  where  life  is  sweet 
Constantly  eat." 

He  had  a  passion  for  the  wild,  and  seems  like 
an  Anglo-Saxon  reversion  to  the  type  of  the  Red 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  145 

Indian.  The  most  distinctive  note  in  Thoreau  is 
his  inhumanity.  Emerson  spoke  of  him  as  a  "per 
fect  piece  of  stoicism."  "  Man,"  said  Thoreau, 
"is  only  the  point  on  which  I  stand."  He  strove 
to  realize  the  objective  life  of  nature — nature  in 
its  aloofness  from  man  ;  to  identify  himself,  with 
the  moose  and  the  mountain.  He  listened,  with 
his  ear  close  to  the  ground,  for  the  voice  of  the 
earth.  ."What  are  the  trees  saying?"  he  exclaimed. 
Following  upon  the  trail  of  the  lumberman  he 
asked  the  primeval  wilderness  for  its  secret,  and 

"saw  beneath  dim  aisles,  in  odorous  beds, 
The  slight  linnasa  hang  its  twin-born  heads." 

He  tried  to  interpret  the  thought  of  Ktaadn  and  to 
fathom  the  meaning  of  the  billows  on  the  back  of 
Cape  Cod,  in  their  indifference  to  the  shipwrecked 
bodies  that  they  rolled  ashore.  "After  sitting  in 
my  chamber  many  days,  reading  the  poets,  I  have 
been  out  early  on  a  foggy  morning  and  heard  the 
cry  of  an  owl  in  a  neighboring  wood  as  from  a 
nature  behind  the  common,  unexplored  by  science 
or  by  literature.  None  of  the  feathered  race  has  yet 
realized  my  youthful  conceptions  of  the  woodland 
depths.  I  had  seen  the  red  election-birds  brought 
from  their  recesses  on  my  comrade's  string,  and 
fancied  that  their  plumage  would  assume  stranger 
and  more  dazzling  colors,  like  the  tints  of  evening, 
in  proportion  as  I  advanced  farther  into  the  dark 
ness  and  solitude  of  the  forest.  Still  less  have  I  seen 
such  strong  and  wild  tints  on  any  poet's  string." 
10 


146  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

It  was  on  the  mystical  side  that  Thoreau  appre 
hended  transcendentalism.  Mysticism  has  been 
defined  as  the  soul's  recognition  of  its  identity 
with  nature.  This  thought  lies  plainly  in  Schel- 
ling's  philosophy,  and  he  illustrated  it  by  his  famous 
figure  of  the  magnet.  Mind  and  nature  are  one; 
they  are  the  positive  and  negative  poles  of  the 
magnet.  In  man,  the  Absolute — that  is,  God — 
becomes  conscious  of  himself;  makes  of  himself, 
as  nature,  an  object  to  himself  as  mind.  "The 
souls  of  men,"  said  Schelling,  "  are  but  the  in 
numerable  individual  eyes  with  which  our  infinite 
World-Spirit  beholds  himself."  This  thought  is 
also  clearly  present  in  Emerson's  view  of  nature, 
and  has  caused  him  to  be  accused  of  pantheism. 
But  if  by  pantheism  is  meant  the  doctrine  that  the 
underlying  principle  of  the  universe  is  matter  or 
force,  none  of  the  transcendentalists  was  a  pan 
theist.  In  their  view  nature  was  divine.  Their 
poetry  is  always  haunted  by  the  sense  of  a  spirit 
ual  reality  which  abides  beyond  the  phenomena. 
Thus  in  Emerson's  Two  Rivers : 

41  Thy  summer  voice,  Mnsketaquit,* 

Repeats  the  music  of  the  rain, 
But  sweeter  rivers  pulsing  flit 

Through  thee  as  thou  through  Concord  plain. 

u  Thou  in  thy  narrow  banks  art  pent : 
The  stream  I  love  unbounded  goes  ; 

Through  flood  and  sea  and  firmament, 

Through  light,  through  life,  it  forward  flows. 

*  The  Indian  name  of  Concord  River. 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  147 

"  I  see  the  inundation  sweet, 

I  hear  the  spending  of  the  stream, 
Through  years,  through  men,  through  nature  fleet, 

Through  passion,  thought,  through  power  and  dream." 

This  mood  occurs  frequently  in  Thoreau.  The 
hard  world  of  matter  becomes  suddenly  all  fluent 
and  spiritual,  and  he  sees  himself  in  it — sees  God. 
"This  earth,"  he  cries,  "which  is  spread  out  like 
a  map  around  me,  is  but  the  lining  of  my  inmost 
soul  exposed."  "  In  me  is  the  sucker  that  I  see  ;  " 
and,  of  Walden  Pond, 

"  I  am  its  stony  shore, 

And  the  breeze  that  passes  o'er." 

"  Suddenly  old  Time  winked  at  me — ah,  you 
know  me,  you  rogue — and  news  had  come  that  IT 
was  well.  That  ancient  universe  is  in  such  capital 
health,  I  think,  undoubtedly,  it  will  never  die.  .  .  . 
I  see,  smell,  taste,  hear,  feel  that  everlasting 
something  to  which  we  are  allied,  at  once  our 
maker,  our  abode,  our  destiny,  our  very  selves." 
It  was  something  ulterior  that  Thoreau  sought  in 
nature.  "  The  other  world,"  he  wrote,  "  is  all  my 
art :  my  pencils  will  draw  no  other :  my  jack- 
knife  will  cut  nothing  else."  Thoreau  did  not 
scorn,  however,  like  Emerson,  to  "examine  too 
microscopically  the  universal  tablet."  He  was  a 
close  observer  and  accurate  reporter  of  the  ways 
of  birds  and  plants  and  the  minuter  aspects  of 
nature.  He  has  had  many  followers,  who  have 
produced  much  pleasant  literature  on  out-door 


148  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

life.  But  in  none  of  them  is  there  that  unique 
combination  of  the  poet,  the  naturalist  and  the 
mystic  which  gives  his  page  its  wild  original  flavor. 
He  had  the  woodcraft  of  a  hunter  and  the  eye 
of  a  botanist,  but  his  imagination  did  not  stop 
short  with  the  fact.  The  sound  of  a  tree  falling 
in  the  Maine  woods  was  to  him  "  as  though  a  door 
had  shut  somewhere  in  the  damp  and  shaggy  wil 
derness."  He  saw  small  things  in  cosmic  rela 
tions.  His  trip  down  the  tame  Concord  has  for 
the  reader  the  excitement  of  a  voyage  of  explora 
tion  into  far  and  unknown  regions.  The  river 
just  above  Sherman's  Bridge,  in  time  of  flood 
"  when  the  wind  blows  freshly  on  a  raw  March  day, 
heaving  up  the  surface  into  dark  and  sober  bil 
lows,"  was  like  Lake  Huron,  "  and  you  may  run 
aground  on  Cranberry  Island,"  and  "get  as  good  a 
freezing  there  as  anywhere  on  the  North-west 
coast."  He  said  that  most  of  the  phenomena  de 
scribed  in  Kane's  voyages  could  be  observed  in 
Concord. 

The  literature  of  transcendentalism  was  like  the 
light  of  the  stars  in  a  winter  night,  keen  and  cold 
and  high.  It  had  the  pale  cast  of  thought,  and 
was  almost  too  spiritual  and  remote  to  "hit  the 
sense  of  mortal  sight."  But  it  was  at  least  in 
digenous.  If  not  an  American  literature — not 
national  and  not  inclusive  of  all  sides  of  Amer 
ican  life — it  was,  at  all  events,  a  genuine  New  En 
gland  literature  and  true  to  the  spirit  of  its  section. 
The  tough  Puritan  stock  had  at  last  put  forth  a 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  149 

blossom  which  compared  with  the  warm,  robust 
growths  of  English  soil  even  as  the  delicate  wind 
flower  of  the  northern  spring  compares  with  the 
cowslips  and  daisies  of  old  England. 

In  1842  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  (1804-1864)  the 
greatest  American  romancer,  came  to  Concord. 
He  had  recently  left  Brook  Farm,  had  just  been 
married,  and  with  his  bride  he  settled  down  in  the 
"  Old  Manse "  for  three  paradisaical  years.  A 
picture  of  this  protracted  honeymoon  and  this 
sequestered  life,  as  tranquil  as  the  slow  stream  on 
whose  banks  it  was  passed,  is  given  in  the  intro 
ductory  chapter  to  his  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse, 
1846,  and  in  the  more  personal  and  confidential 
records  of  his  American  Note  Books,  posthumously 
published.  Hawthorne  was  thirty-eight  when  he 
took  his  place  among  the  Concord  literati.  His 
childhood  and  youth  had  been  spent  partly  at  his 
birthplace,  the  old  and  already  somewhat  decayed 
sea-port  town  of  Salem,  and  partly  at  his  grand 
father's  farm  on  Sebago  Lake,  in  Maine,  then  on 
the  edge  of  the  primitive  forest.  Maine  did  not 
become  a  State,  indeed,  until  1820,  the  year  before 
Hawthorne  entered  Bowdoin  College,  whence  he 
was  graduated  in  1825,  in  the  same  class  with 
Henry  W.  Longfellow  and  one  year  behind  Frank 
lin  Pierce,  afterward  President  of  the  United 
States.  After  leaving  college  Hawthorne  buried 
himself  for  years  in  the  seclusion  of  his  home  at 
Salem.  His  mother,  who  was  early  widowed,  had 
withdrawn  entirely  from  the  world.  For  months 


150  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

at  a  time  Hawthorne  kept  his  room,  seeing  no 
other  society  than  that  of  his  mother  and  sisters, 
reading  all  sorts  of  books  and  writing  wild  tales, 
most  of  which  he  destroyed  as  soon  as  he  had 
written  them.  At  twilight  he  would  emerge  from 
the  house  for  a  solitary  ramble  through  the  streets 
of  the  town  or  along  the  sea-side.  Old  Salem 
had  much  that  was  picturesque  in  its  associations. 
It  had  been  the  scene  of  the  witch  trials  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  it  abounded  in  ancient 
mansions,  the  homes  of  retired  whalers  and  India 
merchants.  Hawthorne's  father  had  been  a  ship 
captain,  and  many  of  his  ancestors  had  followed 
the  sea.  One  of  his  forefathers,  moreover,  had 
been  a  certain  Judge  Hawthorne,  who  in  1691  had 
sentenced  several  of  the  witches  to  death.  The 
thought  of  this  affected  Hawthorne's  imagination 
with  a  pleasing  horror  and  he  utilized  it  afterward 
in  his  House  of  the  Seven  Gables.  Many  of  the  old 
Salem  houses,  too,  had  their  family  histories,  with 
now  and  then  the  hint  of  some  obscure  crime  or 
dark  misfortune  which  haunted  posterity  with  its 
curse  till  all  the  stock  died  out,  or  fell  into  poverty 
and  evil  ways,  as  in  the  Pyricheon  family  of  Haw 
thorne's  romance.  In  the  preface  to  the  Marble 
Faun  Hawthorne  wrote  :  u  No  author  without  a 
trial  can  conceive  of  the  difficulty  of  writing  a  ro 
mance  about  a  country  where  there  is  no  shadow, 
no  antiquity,  no  mystery,  no  picturesque  and  gloomy 
wrong,  nor  any  thing  but  a  commonplace  prosper 
ity  in  broad  and  simple  daylight."  And  yet  it  may 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  151 

be  doubted  whether  any  environment  could  have 
been  found  more  fitted  to  his  peculiar  genius  than 
this  of  his  native  town,  or  any  preparation  better 
calculated  to  ripen  the  faculty  that  was  in  him 
than  these  long,  lonely  years  of  waiting  and  brood 
ing  thought.  From  time  to  time  he  contributed 
a  story  or  a  sketch  to  some  periodical,  such  as 
S.  G.  Goodrich's  Annual,  the  Token,  or  the  Knick 
erbocker  Magazine.  Some  of  these  attracted  the 
attention  of  the  judicious;  but  they  were  anony 
mous  and  signed  by  various  noms  de  plume,  and 
their  author  was  at  this  time — to  use  his  own 
words — "  the  obscurest  man  of  letters  in  America." 
In  1828  he  had  issued  anonymously  and  at  his 
own  expense  a  short  romance,  entitled  Fanshawe. 
It  had  little  success,  and  copies  of  the  first  edition 
are  now  exceedingly  rare.  In  1837  he  published 
a  collection  of  his  magazine  pieces  under  the  title, 
Twice  Told  Tales.  The  book  was  generously 
praised  in  the  North  American  Review  by  his 
former  classmate,  Longfellow ;  and  Edgar  Poe 
showed  his  keen  critical  perception  by  predicting 
that  the  writer  would  easily  put  himself  at  the 
head  of  imaginative  literature  in  America  if  he 
would  discard  allegory,  drop  short  stories  and 
compose  a  genuine  romance.  Poe  compared  Haw 
thorne's  work  with  that  of  the  German  romancer, 
Tieck,  and  it  is  interesting  to  find  confirmation  of 
tliis  dictum  in  passages  of  the  American  Note 
Books,  in  which  Hawthorne  speaks  of  laboring 
over  Tieck  with  a  German  dictionary.  The 


152  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Twice  Told  Tales  are  the  work  of  a  recluse,  who 
makes  guesses  at  life  from  a  knowledge  of  his 
own  heart,  acquired  by  a  habit  of  introspection, 
but  who  has  had  little  contact  with  men.  Many 
of  them  were  shadowy  and  others  were  morbid 
and  unwholesome.  But  their  gloom  was  of  an 
interior  kind,  never  the  physically  horrible  of  Poe. 
It  arose  from  weird  psychological  situations  like 
that  of  Ethan  Brand  in  his  search  for  the  unpar 
donable  sin.  Hawthorne  was  true  to  the  inherited 
instinct  of  Puritanism ;  he  took  the  conscience  for 
his  theme,  and  in  these  early  tales  he  was  already 
absorbed  in  the  problem  of  evil,  the  subtle  ways 
in  which  sin  works  out  its  retribution,  and  the 
species  of  fate  or  necessity  that  the  wrong-doer 
makes  for  himself  in  the  inevitable  sequences  of 
his  crime.  Hawthorne  was  strongly  drawn  toward 
symbols  and  types,  and  never  quite  followed  Poe's 
advice  to  abandon  allegory.  The  Scarlet  Letter 
and  his  other  romances  are  not,  indeed,  strictly 
allegories,  since  the  characters  are  men  and 
women  and  not  mere  personifications  of  abstract 
qualities.  Still  they  all  have  a  certain  allegorical 
tinge.  In  the  Marble  faun,  for  example,  Hilda, 
Kenyon,  Miriam  and  Donatello  have  been  ingen 
iously  explained  as  personifications  respectively 
of  the  conscience,  the  reason,  the  imagination  and 
the  senses.  Without  going  so  far  as  this,  it  is  pos 
sible  to  see  in  these  and  in  Hawthorne's  other  cre 
ations  something  typical  and  representative.  He 
uses  his  characters  like  algebraic  symbols  to  work 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  153 

out  certain  problems  with  :  they  are  rather  more 
and  yet  rather  less  than  flesh  and  blood  individ 
uals.  The  stories  in  Twice  Told  Tales  and  in  the 
second  collection,  Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse, 
1846,  are  more  openly  allegorical  than  his  later 
work.  Thus  the  Ministers  Black  Veil  is  a  sort  of 
anticipation  of  Arthur  Dimmesdale  in  the  Scarlet 
Letter.  From  1846  to  1849  Hawthorne  held  the 
position  of  Surveyor  of  the  Custom  House  of 
Salem.  In  the  preface  to  the  Scarlet  Letter  he 
sketched  some  of  the  government  officials  with 
whom  this  office  had  brought  him  into  contact  in 
a  way  that  gave  some  offense  to  the  friends  of  the 
victims  and  a  great  deal  of  amusement  to  the 
public.  Hawthorne's  humor  was  quiet  and  fine, 
like  Irving's,  but  less  genial  and  with  a  more 
satiric  edge  to  it.  The  book  last  named  was  writ 
ten  at  Salem  and  published  in  1850,  just  before  its 
author's  removal  to  Lenox,  now  a  sort  of  inland 
Newport,  but  then  an  unfashionable  resort  among 
the  Berkshire  hills.  Whatever  obscurity  may  have 
hung  over  Hawthorne  hitherto  was  effectually  dis 
solved  by  this  powerful  tale,  which  was  as  vivid  in 
coloring  as  the  implication  of  its  title.  Hawthorne 
chose  for  his  background  the  somber  life  of  the 
early  settlers  in  New  England.  He  had  always 
been  drawn  toward  this  part  of  American  his 
tory,  and  in  Twice  Told  Tales  had  given  some 
illustrations  of  it  in  Endicotfs  Red  Cross  and 
Legends  of  the  Province  House.  Against  this  dark 
foil  moved  in  strong  relief  the  figures  of  Hester 


154  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Prynne,  the  woman  taken  in  adultery,  her  para 
mour,  the  Rev.  Arthur  Dimmesdale,  her  husband, 
old  Roger  Chillingworth,  and  her  illegitimate 
child.  In  tragic  power,  in  its  grasp  of  the  ele 
mentary  passions  of  human  nature  and  its  deep 
and  subtle  insight  into  the  inmost  secrets  of  the 
heart,  this  is  Hawthorne's  greatest  book.  He 
never  crowded  his  canvas  with  figures.  In  the 
Blitkedale  Romance  and  the  Marble  Faun  there 
is  the  same  parti  carre'or  group  of  four  characters. 
In  the  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  there  are  five. 
The  last  mentioned  of  these,  published  in  1852, 
was  of  a  more  subdued  intensity  than  the  Scarlet 
Letter,  but  equally  original  and,  upon  the  whole, 
perhaps  equally  good.  The  Blithedate  Romance, 
published  in  the  same  year,  though  not  strik 
ingly  inferior  to  the  others,  adhered  more  to  con 
ventional  patterns  in  its  plot  and  in  the  sensa 
tional  nature  of  its  ending.  The  suicide  of  the 
heroine  by  drowning,  and  the  terrible  scene  of  the 
recovery  of  her  body,  were  suggested  to  the  au 
thor  by  an  experience  of  his  own  on  Concord 
River,  the  account  of  which,  in  his  own  words, 
may  be  read  in  Julian  Hawthorne's  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne  and  His  Wife.  In  1852  Hawthorne 
returned  to  Concord  and  bought  the  "  Wayside  " 
property,  which  he  retained  until  his  death.  But  in 
the  following  year  his  old  college  friend  Pierce,  now 
become  President,  appointed  him  Consul  to  Liver 
pool,  and  he  went  abroad  for  seven  years.  The 
most  valuable  fruit  of  his  foreign  residence  was  the 


THE  CQNCORD  WRITERS.  155 

romance  of  the  Marble  Faun,  1860;  the  longest  of 
his  fictions  and  the  richest  in  descriptive  beauty. 
The  theme  of  this  was  the  development  of  the  soul 
through  the  experience  of  sin.  There  is  a  haunt 
ing  mystery  thrown  about  the  story,  like  a  soft  veil 
of  mist,  veiling  the  beginning  and  the  end.  There 
is  even  a  delicate  teasing  suggestion  of  the  preter 
natural  in  Donatello,  the  Faun,  a  creation  as  orig 
inal  as  Shakspere's  Caliban,  or  Fouque's  Undine, 
and  yet  quite  on  this  side  the  border-line  of  the 
human.  Our  Old  Home,  a  book  of  charming  pa 
pers  on  England,  was  published  in  1863.  Mani 
fold  experience  of  life  and  contact  with  men, 
affording  scope  for  his  always  keen  observation, 
had  added  range,  fullness,  warmth  to  the  imagi 
native  subtlety  which  had  manifested  itself  even 
in  his  earliest  tales.  Two  admirable  books  for 
children,  the  Wonder  Book  and  Tanglewood  Tales, 
in  which  the  classical  mythologies  were  retold, 
should  also  be  mentioned  in  the  list  of  Haw 
thorne's  writings,  as  well  as  the  American,  English, 
and  Italian  Note  Books,  the  first  of  which  contains 
the  seed  thoughts  of  some  of  his  finished  works,  to 
gether  with  hundreds  of  hints  for  plots,  episodes,  de 
scriptions,  etc.,  which  he  never  found  time  to  work 
out.  Hawthorne's  style,  in  his  first  sketches  and 
stories  a  little  stilted  and  "bookish,"  gradually  ac 
quired  an  exquisite  perfection,  and  is  as  well  worth 
study  as  that  of  any  prose  classic  in  the  English 
tongue. 

Hawthorne  was  no  transcendentalist.    He  dwelt 


156  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

much  in  a  world  of  ideas,  and  he  sometimes 
doubted  whether  the  tree  on  the  bank  or  its  image 
in  the  stream  were  the  more  real.  But  this  had 
little  in  common  with  the  philosophical  idealism 
of  his  neighbors.  He  reverenced  Emerson,  and 
he  held  kindly  intercourse — albeit  a  silent  man 
and  easily  bored — with  Thoreau  and  Ellery  Chan- 
ning,  and  even  with  Margaret  Fuller.  But  his 
sharp  eyes  saw  whatever  was  whimsical  or  weak  in 
the  apostles  of  the  new  faith.  He  had  little  enthu 
siasm  for  causes  or  reforms,  and  among  so  many 
Abolitionists  he  remained  a  Democrat,  and  even 
wrote  a  campaign  life  of  his  friend  Pierce. 

The  village  of  Concord  has  perhaps  done  more 
for  American  literature  than  the  city  of  New  York. 
Certainly  there  are  few  places  where  associations, 
both  patriotic  and  poetic,  cluster  so  thickly.  At 
one  side  of  the  grounds  of  the  Old  Manse — which 
has  the  river  at  its  back — runs  down  a  shaded 
lane  to  the  Concord  monument  and  the  figure  of 
the  Minute  Man  and  the  successor  of  "  the  rude 
bridge  that  arched  the  flood."  Scarce  two  miles 
away,  among  the  woods,  is  little  Walden — "  God's 
drop."  The  men  who  made  Concord  famous  are 
asleep  in  Sleepy  Hollow,  yet  still  their  memory 
prevails  to  draw  seekers  after  truth  to  the  Con 
cord  Summer  School  of  Philosophy,  which  meets 
every  year,  to  reason  high  of  "  God,  Freedom,  and 
Immortality,"  next-door  to  the  "  Wayside,"  and  un 
der  the  hill  on  whose  ridge  Hawthorne  wore  a  path, 
as  he  paced  up  and  down  beneath  the  hemlocks. 


THE  CONCORD  WRITERS.  157 

i  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  Nature.  The 
American  Scholar.  Literary  Ethics.  The  Tran- 
scendentalist.  The  Over-soul.  Address  before 
the  Cambridge  Divinity  School.  English  Traits. 
Representative  Men.  Poems. 

2.  Henry  David  Thoreau.    Excursions.    Walden. 
A  Week   on  the  Concord   and   Merrimac  Rivers. 
Cape  Cod.     The  Maine  Woods. 

3.  Nathaniel  Hawthorne.     Mosses  from  an  Old 
Manse.     The  Scarlet  Letter.     The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables.     The  Blithedale  Romance.     The 
Marble  Faun.     Our  Old  Home. 

4.  Transcendentalism  in  New  England.     By  O. 
B.   Frothingham.      New  York:    G.   P.    Putnam's 
Sons.     1875. 


158  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  V. 
THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS. 

1837-1861. 

WITH  few  exceptions,  the  men  who  have  made 
American  literature  what  it  is  have  been  college 
graduates.  And  yet  our  colleges  have  not  com 
monly  been,  in  themselves,  literary  centers.  Most 
of  them  have  been  small  and  poor,  and  situated  in 
little  towns  or  provincial  cities.  Their  alumni 
scatter  far  and  wide  immediately  after  graduation, 
and  even  those  of  them  who  may  feel  drawn  to  a 
life  of  scholarship  or  letters  find  little  to  attract 
them  at  the  home  of  their  alma  mater,  and  seek, 
by  preference,  the  large  cities  where  periodicals 
and  publishing  houses  offer  some  hope  of  support 
in  a  literary  career.  Even  in  the  older  and  bet 
ter  equipped  universities  the  faculty  is  usually  a 
corps  of  working  scholars,  each  man  intent  upon 
his  specialty  and  rather  inclined  to  undervalue 
merely  "literary"  performance.  In  many  cases 
the  fastidious  and  hypercritical  turn  of  mind 
which  besets  the  scholar,  the  timid  conservatism 
which  naturally  characterizes  an  ancient  seat  of 
learning  and  the  spirit  of  theological  conformity 
which  suppresses  free  discussion  have  exerted  their 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  159 

benumbing  influence  upon  the  originality  and  cre 
ative  impulse  of  their  inmates.  Hence  it  happens 
that,  while  the  contributions  of  American  college 
teachers  to  the  exact  sciences,  to  theology  and 
philology,  metaphysics,  political  philosophy  and  the 
severer  branches  of  learning  have  been  honorable 
and  important,  they  have  as  a  class  made  little 
mark  upon  the  general  literature  of  the  country. 
The  professors  of  literature  in  our  colleges  are 
usually  persons  who  have  made  no  additions  to 
literature,  and  the  professors  of  rhetoric  seem  or 
dinarily  to  have  been  selected  to  teach  students 
how  to  write,  for  the  reason  that  they  themselves 
have  never  written  any  thing  that  any  one  has  ever 
read. 

To  these  remarks  the  Harvard  College  of  some 
fifty  years  ago  offers  a  striking  exception.  It  was 
not  the  large  and  fashionable  university  that  it  has 
lately  grown  to  be,  with  its  multiplied  elective 
courses,  its  numerous  faculty  and  its  somewhat 
motley  collection  of  undergraduates ;  but  a  small 
school  of  the  classics  and  mathematics,  with  some 
thing  of  ethics,  natural  science  and  the  modern 
languages  added  to  its  old-fashioned,  scholastic 
curriculum,  and  with  a  very  homogeneous  clientele, 
drawn  mainly  from  the  Unitarian  families  of 
Eastern  Massachusetts.  Nevertheless  a  finer  in 
tellectual  life,  in  many  respects,  was  lived  at  old 
Cambridge  within  the  years  covered  by  this  chap 
ter  than  nowadays  at  the  same  place,  or  at  any 
date  in  any  other  American  university  town.  The 


160  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

neighborhood  of  Boston,  where  the  commercial 
life  has  never  so  entirely  overlain  the  intellectual 
as  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  has  been  a 
standing  advantage  to  Harvard  College.  The 
recent  upheaval  in  religious  thought  had  secured 
toleration,  and  made  possible  that  free  and  even 
audacious  interchange  of  ideas  without  which  a 
literary  atmosphere  is  impossible.  From  these,  or 
from  whatever  causes,  it  happened  that  the  old 
Harvard  scholarship  had  an  elegant  and  tasteful 
side  to  it,  so  that  the  dry  erudition  of  the  schools 
blossomed  into  a  generous  culture,  and  there  were 
men  in  the  professors'  chairs  who  were  no  less 
efficient  as  teachers  because  they  were  also  poets, 
orators,  wits  and  rnen  of  the  world.  In  the  seven 
teen  years  from  1821  to  1839  there  were  gradu 
ated  from  Harvard  College  Emerson,  Holmes, 
Sumner,  Phillips,  Motley,  Thoreau,  Lowell,  and 
Edward  Everett  Hale,  some  of  whom  took  up  their 
residence  at  Cambridge,  others  at  Boston  and 
others  at  Concord,  which  was  quite  as  much  a 
spiritual  suburb  of  Boston  as  Cambridge  was.  In 
1836,  when  Longfellow  became  Professor  of 
Modern  Languages  at  Harvard,  Sumner  was  lect 
uring  in  the  Law  School.  The  following  year-2 
in  which  Thoreau  took  his  bachelor's  degree — 
witnessed  the  delivery  of  Emerson's  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  lecture  on  the  American  Scholar  in  the 
college  chapel  and  Wendell  Phillips's  speech  on 
the  Murder  of  Lovejoy  in  Faneuil  Hall.  Lowell, 
whose  description  of  the  impression  produced  by 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  161 

the  former  of  these  famous  addresses  has  been 
quoted  in  a  previous  chapter,  was  an  undergradu 
ate  at  the  time.  He  took  his  degree  in  1838  and 
in  1855  succeeded  Longfellow  in  the  chair  of 
Modern  Languages.  Holmes  had  been  chosen  in 
1847  Professor  of  Anatomy  and  Philosophy  in  the 
Medical  School — a  position  which  he  held  until 
1882.  The  historians,  Prescott  and  Bancroft,  had 
been  graduated  in  1814  and  1817  respectively. 
The  former's  first  important  publication,  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella,  appeared  in  1837.  Bancroft  had  been 
a  tutor  in  the  college  in  1822-23  and  the  initial 
volume  of  his  History  of  the  United  States  was  is 
sued  in  1835.  Another  of  the  Massachusetts  school 
of  historical  writers,  Francis  Parkman,  took  his  first 
degree  at  Harvard  in  1844.  Cambridge  was  still 
hardly  more  than  a  village,  a  rural  outskirtof  Bos 
ton,  such  as  Lowell  described  it  in  his  article,  Cam 
bridge  Thirty  Years  Ago,  originally  contributed  to 
Putnam  s  Monthly  in  1853,  and  afterward  reprinted 
in  his  Fireside  Travels,  1864.  The  situation  of  a 
university  scholar  in  old  Cambridge  was  thus  an 
almost  ideal  one.  Within  easy  reach  of  a  great 
city,  with  its  literary  and  social  clubs,  its  theaters, 
lecture  courses,  public  meetings,  dinner  parties, 
etc.,  he  yet  lived  withdrawn  in  an  academic  retire 
ment  among  elm-shaded  avenues  and  leafy  gar 
dens,  the  dome  of  the  Boston  State-house  looming 
distantly  across  the  meadows  where  the  Charles 
laid  its  "  steel  blue  sickle  "  upon  the  variegated, 
plush-like  ground  of  the  wide  marsh.  There  was 
11 


162  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

thus,  at  all  times  during  the  quarter  of  a  century 
embraced  between  1837  and  1861,  a  group  of 
brilliant  men  resident  in  or  about  Cambridge  and 
Boston,  meeting  frequently  and  intimately,  and 
exerting  upon  one  another  a  most  stimulating  in 
fluence.  Some  of  the  closer  circles — all  con 
centric  to  the  university — of  which  this  group  was 
loosely  composed  were  laughed  at  by  outsiders  as 
"  Mutual  Admiration  Societies."  Such  was,  for 
instance,  the  "Five  of  Clubs,"  whose  members 
were  Longfellow,  Sumner,  C.  C.  Felton,  Professor 
of  Greek  at  Harvard,  and  afterward  president  of 
the  college  ;  G.  S.  Hillard,  a  graceful  lecturer, 
essayist  and  poet,  of  a  somewhat  amateurish  kind  ; 
and  Henry  R.  Cleveland,  of  Jamaica  Plain,  a  lover 
of  books  and  a  writer  of  them. 

Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow  (1807-1882)  the 
most  widely  read  and  loved  of  American  poets — or 
indeed,  of  all  contemporary  poets  in  England  and 
America — though  identified  with  Cambridge  for 
nearly  fifty  years  was  a  native  of  Portland,  Maine, 
and  a  graduate  of  Bowdoin  College,  in  the  same 
class  with  Hawthorne.  Since  leaving  college,  in 
1825,  he  had  studied  and  traveled  for  some  years 
in  Europe,  and  had  held  the  professorship  of  mod 
ern  languages  at  Bowdoin.  He  had  published  sev 
eral  text  books,  a  number  of  articles  on  the  Romance 
languages  and  literatures  in  the  North  American 
Review,  a  thin  volume  of  metrical  translations  from 
the  Spanish,  a  few  original  poems  in  various  peri 
odicals,  and  the  pleasant  sketches  of  European 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  163 

travel  entitled  Outre  Mer.  But  Longfellow's 
fame  began  with  the  appearance  in  1839  of  his 
Voices  of  the  Night.  Excepting  an  earlier  collec 
tion  by  Bryant  this  was  the  first  volume  of  real 
poetry  published  in  New  England,  and  it  had 
more  warmth  and  sweetness,  a  greater  richness 
and  variety  than  Bryant's  work  ever  possessed. 
Longfellow's  genius  was  almost  feminine  in  its 
flexibility  and  its  sympathetic  quality.  It  readily 
took  the  color  of  its  surroundings  and  opened 
itself  eagerly  to  impressions  of  the  beautiful  from 
every  quarter,  but  especially  from  books.  This 
first  volume  contained  a  few  things  written  during 
his  student  days  at  Bowdoin,  one  of  which,  a  blank 
verse  piece  on  Autumn,  clearly  shows  the  influence 
of  Bryant's  TJianatopsis.  Most  of  these  juvenilia 
had  nature  for  their  theme,  but  they  were  not  so 
sternly  true  to  the  New  England  landscape  as 
Thoreau  or  Bryant.  The  skylark  and  the  ivy  ap 
pear  among  their  scenic  properties,  and  in  the  best 
of  them,  Woods  in  Winter,  it  is  the  English  "haw 
thorn"  and*  not  any  American  tree,  through  which 
the  gale  is  made  to  blow,  just  as  later  Longfellow 
uses  u  rooks  "  instead  of  crows.  The  young  poet's 
fancy  was  instinctively  putting  out  feelers  toward 
the  storied  lands  of  the  Old  World,  and  in  his 
Hymn  of  the  Moravian  Nuns  of  Bethlehem  he 
transformed  the  rude  church  of  the  Moravian 
sisters  to  a  cathedral  with  "  glimmering  tapers," 
swinging  censers,  chancel,  altar,  cowls  and  "dim 
mysterious  aisle."  After  his  visit  to  Europe,  Long- 


164  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

fellow  returned  deeply  imbued  with  the  spirit  of 
romance.  It  was  his  mission  to  refine  our  national 
taste  by  opening  to  American  readers,  in  their  own 
vernacular,  new  springs  of  beauty  in  the  literatures 
of  foreign  tongues.  The  fact  that  this  mission  was 
interpretative,  rather  than  creative,  hardly  detracts 
from  Longfellow's  true  originality.  It  merely  in 
dicates  that  his  inspiration  came  to  him  in  the  first 
instance  from  other  sources  than  the  common  life 
about  him.  He  naturally  began  as  a  translator, 
and  this  first  volume  contained,  among  other 
things,  exquisite  renderings  from  the  German  of 
Uhland,  Salis,  and  Miiller,  from  the  Danish, 
French,  Spanish  and  Anglo-Saxon,  and  a  few  pas 
sages  from  Dante.  Longfellow  remained  all  his 
life  a  translator,  and  in  subtler  ways  than  by  direct 
translation  he  infused  the  fine  essence  of  European 
poetry  into  his  own.  He  loved — 

"  Tales  that  have  the  rime  of  age 
And  chronicles  of  eld." 

The  golden  light  of  romance  is  shed  upon  his 
page,  and  it  is  his  habit  to  borrow  mediaeval  and 
Catholic  imagery  from  his  favorite  middle  ages, 
even  when  writing  of  American  subjects.  To  him 
the  clouds  are  hooded  friars,  that  "  tell  their  beads 
in  drops  of  rain  ; "  the  midnight  winds  blowing 
through  woods  and  mountain  passes  are  chanting 
solemn  masses  for  the  repose  of  the  dying  year, 
and  the  strain  ends  with  the  prayer — 

"  Kyrie,  eleyson, 
Christe,  eleyson." 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  165 

In  his  journal  he  wrote  characteristically:  "The 
black  shadows  lie  upon  the  grass  like  engravings 
in  a  book.  Autumn  has  written  his  rubric  on  the 
illuminated  leaves,  the  wind  turns  them  over  and 
chants  like  a  friar."  This  in  Cambridge,  of  a 
moonshiny  night,  on  the  first  day  of  the  American 
October.  But  several  of  the  pieces  in  Voices  of 
the  Night  sprang  more  immediately  from  the  poet's 
own  inner  experience.  The  Hymn  to  the  Night, 
the  Psalm  of  Life,  the  Reaper  and  the  Flowers, 
Footsteps  of  Angels,  the  Light  of  Stars,  and  the 
Beleaguered  City  spoke  of  love,  bereavement,  com 
fort,  patience  and  faith.  In  these  lovely  songs 
and  in  many  others  of  the  same  kind  which  he  aft 
erward  wrote,  Longfellow  touched  the  hearts  of  all 
his  countrymen.  America  is  a  country  of  homes, 
and  Longfellow,  as  the  poet  of  sentiment  and  of 
the  domestic  affections,  became  and  remains  far 
more  general  in  his  appeal  than  such  a  "cosmic  " 
singer  as  Whitman,  who  is  still  practically  un 
known  to  the  "  fierce  democracy  "  to  which  he 
has  addressed  himself.  It  would  be  hard  to  over 
estimate  the  influence  for  good  exerted  by  the 
tender  feeling  and  the  pure  and  sweet  morality 
which  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  copies  of 
Longfellow's  writings,  that  have  been  circulated 
among  readers  of  all  classes  in  America  and  En 
gland,  have  brought  with  them. 

Three  later  collections,  Ballads  and  Other  Poems, 
1842  ;  the  Belfry  of  Bruges,  1846  ;  and  the  Seaside 
and  the  Fireside,  1850,  comprise  most  of  what  is 


1 66  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

noteworthy  in  Longfellow's  minor  poetry.  The  first 
of  these  embraced,  together  with  some  renderings 
from  the  German  and  the  Scandinavian  languages, 
specimens  of  stronger  original  work  than  the  au 
thor  had  yet  put  forth;  namely,  the  two  powerful 
ballads  of  the  Skeleton  in  Armor  and  the  Wreck 
of  the  Hesperus.  The  former  of  these,  written  ini 
the  swift  leaping  meter  of  Drayton's  Ode  to  the 
Cambro  Britons  on  their  Harp,  was  suggested  by 
the  digging  up  of  a  mail-clad  skeleton  at  Fall 
River — a  circumstance  which  the  poet  linked  with 
the  traditions  about  the  Round  Tower  at  Newport 
and  gave  to  the  whole  the  spirit  of  a  Norse  viking 
song  of  war  and  of  the  sea.  The  Wreck  of  the 
Hesperus  was  occasioned  by  the  news  of  ship 
wrecks  on  the  coast  near  Gloucester  and  by  the 
name  of  a  reef — "  Norman's  Woe  " — where  many 
of  them  took  place.  It  was  written  one  night  be 
tween  twelve  and  three,  and  cost  the  poet,  he  said, 
"hardly  an  effort."  Indeed,  it  is  the  spontaneous 
ease  and  grace,  the  unfailing  taste  of  Lonfellow's 
lines,  which  are  their  best  technical  quality. 
There  is  nothing  obscure  or  esoteric  about  his 
poetry.  If  there  is  little  passion  or  intellectual 
depth,  there  is  always  genuine  poetic  feeling,  often 
a  very  high  order  of  imagination  and  almost  in 
variably  the  choice  of  the  right  word.  In  this 
volume  were  also  included  the  Village  Blacksmith 
and  Excelsior.  The  latter,  and  the  Psalm  of  Life, 
have  had  a  "  damnable  iteration "  which  causes 
them  to  figure  as  Longfellow's  most  popular 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  167 

pieces.  They  are  by  no  means,  however,  among 
his  best.  They  are  vigorously  expressed  com 
monplaces  of  that  hortatory  kind  which  passes 
for  poetry,  but  is,  in  reality,  a  vague  species  of 
preaching. 

In  the  Belfry  of  Bruges  and  the  Seaside  and  the 
Fireside,  the  translations  were  still  kept  up,  and 
among  the  original  pieces  were  the  Occupation 
of  Orion  —  the  most  imaginative  of  all  Long 
fellow's  poems;  Seaweed,  which  has  very  noble 
stanzas,  the  favorite  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs,  the 
Building  of  the  Ship,  with  its  magnificent  closing 
apostrophe  to  the  Union,  and  the  Fire  of  Drift 
wood,  the  subtlest  in  feeling  of  any  thing  that  the 
poet  ever  wrote.  With  these  were  verses  of  a 
more  familiar  quality,  such  as  the  Bridge,  Resig 
nation,  and  the  Day  Is  Done,  and  many  others,  all 
reflecting  moods  of  gentle  and  pensive  sentiment, 
and  drawing  from  analogies  in  nature  or  in  legend 
lessons  which,  if  somewhat  obvious,  were  expressed 
with  perfect  art.  Like  Keats,  he  apprehended 
every  thing  on  its  beautiful  side.  Longfellow  was 
all  poet.  Like  Ophelia  in  Hamlet, 

"  Thought  and  affection,  passion,  hell  itself, 
He  turns  to  favor  and  to  prettiness." 

He  cared  very  little  about  the  intellectual  move 
ment  of  the  age.  The  transcendental  ideas  of 
Emerson  passed  over  his  head  and  left  him  undis 
turbed.  For  politics  he  had  that  gentlemanly 
distaste  which  the  cultivated  class  in  America  had 


168  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

already  begun  to  entertain.  In  1842  he  printed  a 
small  volume  of  Poems  on  Slavery,  which  drew 
commendation  from  his  friend  Sumner,  but  had 
nothing  of  the  fervor  of  Whittier's  or  Lowell's  ut 
terances  on  the  same  subject  It  is  interesting  to 
compare  his  journals  with  Hawthorne's  American 
Note  Books  and  to  observe  in  what  very  different 
ways  the  two  writers  made  prey  of  their  daily 
experiences  for  literary  material.  A  favorite 
haunt  of  Longfellow's  was  the  bridge  between 
Boston  and  Cambridgeport,  the  same  which  he  put 
into  verse  in  his  poem,  the  Bridge.  "  I  always 
stop  on  the  bridge,"  he  writes  in  his  journal ; 
"tide  waters  are  beautiful.  From  the  ocean  up 
into  the  land  they  go,  like  messengers,  to  ask  why 
the  tribute  has  not  been  paid.  The  brooks  and 
rivers  answer  that  there  has  been  little  harvest  of 
wiow  and  rain  this  year.  Floating  sea-weed  and 
kelp  is  carried  up  into  the  meadows,  as  returning 
sailors  bring  oranges  in  bandanna  handkerchiefs 
to  friends  in  the  country."  And  again:  "We 
leaned  for  awhile  on  the  wooden  rail  and  enjoyed 
the  silvery  reflection  on  the  sea,  making  sundry 
comparisons.  Among  other  thoughts  we  had  this 
cheering  one,  that  the  whole  sea  was  flashing  with 
this  heavenly  light,  though  we  saw  it  only  in  a 
single  track  ;  the  dark  waves  are  the  dark  provi 
dences  of  God  ;  luminous,  though  not  to  us;  and 
even  to  ourselves  in  another  position."  "  Walk  on 
the  bridge,  both  ends  of  which  are  lost  in  the  fog, 
like  human  life  midway  between  two  eternities; 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  169 

beginning  and  ending  in  mist."  In  Hawthorne  an 
allegoric  meaning  is  usually  something  deeper  and 
subtler  than  this,  and  seldom  so  openly  expressed. 
Many  of  Longfellow's  poems — the  Beleaguered 
City,  for  example — may  be  definitely  divided  into 
two  parts ;  in  the  first,  a  story  is  told  or  a  natural 
phenomenon  described  ;  in  the  second,  the  spiritual 
application  of  the  parable  is  formally  set  forth. 
This  method  became  with  him  almost  a  trick  of 
style,  and  his  readers  learned  to  look  for  the  hac 
fabula  docet  at  the  end  as  a  matter  of  course. 
for  the  prevailing  optimism  in  Longfellow's 
of  life — of  which  the  above  passage  is  an  instance 
— it  seemed  to  be  in  him  an  affair  of  temperament, 
and  not,  as  in  Emerson,  the  result  of  philosophic  in 
sight.  Perhaps,  however,  in  the  last  analysis  opti 
mism  and  pessimism  are  subjective — the  expression 
of  temperament  or  individual  experience,  since  the 
facts  of  life  are  the  same,  whether  seen  through 
Schopenhauer's  eyes  or  through  Emerson's.  If 
there  is  any  particular  in  which  Longfellow's  inspi 
ration  came  to  him  at  first  hand  and  not  through 
books,  it  is  in  respect  to  the  aspects  of  the  sea.  On 
this  theme  no  American  poet  has  written  more  beau 
tifully  and  with  a  keener  sympathy  than  the  author 
of  the  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus  and  of  Seaweed. 

In  1847  was  published  the  long  poem  of  Evan- 
Celine.  The  story  of  the  Acadian  peasant  girl,  who 
was  separated  from  her  lover  in  the  dispersion  of 
her  people  by  the  English  troops,  and  after  weary 
wanderings  and  a  life-long  search  found  him  at  last, 


170  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

an  old  man  dying  in  a  Philadelphia  hospital,  was 
told  to  Longfellow  by  the  Rev.  H.  L.  Conolly, 
who  had  previously  suggested  it  to  Hawthorne  as 
a  subject  for  a  story.  Longfellow,  characteristic 
ally  enough,  *'  got  up  "  the  local  color  for  his  poem 
from  Haliburton's  account  of  the  dispersion  of 
the  Grand-Pre  Acadians,  from  Darby's  Geograph 
ical  Description  of  Louisiana  and  Watson's  Annals 
of  Philadelphia.  He  never  needed  to  go  much 
outside  of  his  library  for  literary  impulse  and  ma 
terial.  Whatever  may  be  held  as  to  Longfellow's 
inventive  powers  as  a  creator  of  characters  or  an 
interpreter  of  American  life,  his  originality  as  an 
artist  is  manifested  by  his  successful  domestication 
in  Evangeline  of  the  dactylic  hexameter,  which  no 
English  poet  had  yet  used  with  effect.  The  En 
glish  poet,  Arthur  Hugh  Clough,  who  lived  for  a 
time  in  Cambridge,  followed  Longfellow's  example 
in  the  use  of  hexameter  in  his  Bothie  of  Tober-na- 
Vnolich,  so  that  we  have  now  arrived  at  the  time — 
a  proud  moment  for  American  letters — when  the 
works  of  our  writers  began  to  react  upon  the 
literature  of  Europe.  But  the  beauty  of  the  de 
scriptions  in  Evangeline.  and  the  pathos — somewhat 
too  drawn  out — of  the  story  made  it  dear  to  a 
multitude  of  readers  who  cared  nothing  about  the 
technical  disputes  of  Poe  and  other  critics  as  to 
whether  or  not  Longfellow's  lines  were  sufficiently 
"  spondaic"  to  truthfully  represent  the  quantitative 
hexameters  of  Homer  and  Vergil. 

In  1855  appeared  Hiawatha,  Longfellow's  most 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  171 

aboriginal  and  u  American  "  book.  The  tripping 
trochaic  measure  he  borrowed  from  the  Finnish 
epic  Kalevala.  The  vague,  childlike  mythology 
of  the  Indian  tribes,  with  its  anthropomorphic 
sense  of  the  brotherhood  between  men,  animals, 
and  the  forms  of  inanimate  nature,  he  took  from 
Schoolcraft's  Algic  Researches,  1839.  He  fixed 
forever,  in  a  skillfully  chosen  poetic  form,  the  more 
inward  and  imaginative  part  of  Indian  character, 
as  Cooper  had  given  permanence  to  its  external 
and  active  side.  Of  Longfellow's  dramatic  experi 
ments  the  Golden  Legend,  1851,  alone  deserves 
mention  here.  This  was  in  his  chosen  realm ;  a 
tale  taken  from  the  ecclesiastical  annals  of  the 
middle  ages,  precious  with  martyrs'  blood  and 
bathed  in  the  rich  twilight  of  the  cloister.  It  con 
tains  some  of  his  best  work,  but  its  merit  is  rather 
poetic  than  dramatic  ;  although  Ruskin  praised  it 
for  the  closeness  Avith  which  it  entered  into  the 
temper  of  the  monk. 

Longfellow  has  pleased  the  people  more  than 
the  critics.  He  gave  freely  what  he  had,  and  the 
gift  was  beautiful.  Those  who  have  looked  in  his 
poetry  for  something  else  than  poetry,  or  for 
poetry  of  some  other  kind,  have  not  been  slow  to 
assert  that  he  was  a  lady's  poet.;  one  who  satisfied 
callow  youths  and  school-girls  by  uttering  com 
monplaces  in  graceful  and  musical  shape,  but 
who  offered  no  strong  meat  for  men.  Miss  Fuller 
called  his  poetry  thin  and  the  poet  himself  a 
"  dandy  Pindar."  This  is  not  true  of  his  poetry, 


172  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

or  of  the  best  of  it.  But  he  had  a  singing  and  not 
a  talking  voice,  and  in  his  prose  one  becomes  sen 
sible  of  a  certain  weakness.  Hyperioti,  for  exam 
ple,  published  in  1839,  a  loitering  fiction,  inter 
spersed  with  descriptions  of  European  travel,  is, 
upon  the  whole,  a  weak  book,  over  flowery  in  dic 
tion  and  sentimental  in  tone. 

The  crown  of  Longfellow's  achievements  as  a 
translator  was  his  great  version  of  Dante's  Divina 
Cotnmedia,  published  between  1867  and  1870.  It 
is  a  severely  literal,  almost  a  line  for  line,  render 
ing.  The  meter  is  preserved,  but  the  rhyme  sac 
rificed.  If  not  the  best  English  poem  constructed 
from  Dante,  it  is  at  all  events  the  most  faithful 
and  scholarly  paraphrase.  The  sonnets  which  ac 
companied  it  are  among  Longfellow's  best  work. 
He  seems  to  have  been  raised  by  daily  communion 
with  the  great  Tuscan  into  a  habit  of  deeper  and 
more  subtle  thought  than  is  elsewhere  common  in 
his  poetry. 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  (1809-  )  is  a  native  of 
Cambridge  and  a  graduate  of  Harvard  in  the  class 
of  '29 ;  a  class  whose  anniversary  reunions  he 
has  celebrated  in  something  like  forty  distinct 
poems  and  songs.  For  sheer  cleverness  and  ver 
satility  Dr.  Holmes  is,  perhaps,  unrivaled  among 
American  men  of  letters.  He  has  been  poet,  wit, 
humorist,  novelist,  essayist  and  a  college  lecturer 
and  writer  on  medical  topics.  In  all  of  these  de 
partments  he  has  produced  work  which  ranks 
high,  if  not  with  the  highest  His  father,  Dr 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  173 

Abiel  Holmes,  was  a  graduate  of  Yale  and  an  or 
thodox  minister  of  liberal  temper,  but  the  son 
early  threw  in  his  lot  with  the  Unitarians  ;  and, 
as  was  natural  to  a  man  of  a  satiric  turn  and  with  a 
very  human  enjoyment  of  a  fight,  whose  youth  was 
cast  in  an  age  of  theological  controversy,  he  has 
always  had  his  fling  at  Calvinism  and  has  pro 
longed  the  slogans  of  old  battles  into  a  later 
generation  ;  sometimes,  perhaps,  insisting  upon 
them  rather  wearisomely  and  beyond  the  limits  of 
good  taste.  He  had,  even  as  an  undergraduate,  a 
reputation  for  cleverness  at  writing  comic  verses, 
and  many  of  his  good  things  in  this  kind,  such  as 
the  Dorchester  Giant  and  the  Height  of  the  Ridicu 
lous,  were  contributed  to  the  Collegian,  a  students' 
paper.  But  he  first  drew  the  attention  of  a  wider 
public  by  his  spirited  ballad  of  Old  Ironsides — 

"  Ay  !     Tear  her  tattered  ensign  down  !  " — 

composed  about  1830,  when  it  was  proposed  by 
the  government  to  take  to  pieces  the  unseaworthy 
hulk  of  the  famous  old  man-of-war,  "  Constitution." 
Holmes's  indignant  protest — which  has  been  a 
favorite  subject  for  school-boy  declamation — had 
the  effect  of  postponing  the  vessel's  fate  for  a  great 
many  years.  From  1830-35  the  young  poet  was 
pursuing  his  medical  studies  in  Boston  and  Paris, 
contributing  now  and  then  some  verses  to  the 
magazines.  Of  his  life  as  a  medical  student  in 
Paris  there  are  many  pleasant  reminiscences  in  his 
Autocrat  and  other  writings,  as  where  he  tells,  for 


174  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

instance,  of  a  dinner  party  of  Americans  in  the 
French  capital,  where  one  of  the  company  brought 
tears  of  home-sickness  into  the  eyes  of  his  sodales 
by  saying  that  the  tinkle  of  the  ice  in  the  cham 
pagne-glasses  reminded  him  of  the  cowbells  in 
the  rocky  old  pastures  of  New  England.  In  1836 
he  printed  his  first  collection  of  poems.  The 
volume  contained  among  a  number  of  pieces 
broadly  comic,  like  the  September  Gale,  the  Music 
Grinders,  and  the  Ballad  of  the  Oysterman — which 
at  once  became  widely  popular — a  few  poems  of  a 
finer  and  quieter  temper,  in  which  there  was  a 
quaint  blending  of  the  humorous  and  the  pathetic. 
Such  were  My  Aunt  and  the  Last  Leaf — which 
Abraham  Lincoln  found  "  inexpressibly  touching," 
and  which  it  is  difficult  to  read  without  the  double 
tribute  of  a  smile  and  a  tear.  The  volume  con 
tained  also  Poetry :  A  Metrical  Essay,  read  before 
the  Harvard  Chapter  of  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Society,  which  was  the  first  of  that  long  line  of 
capital  occasional  poems  which  Holmes  has  been 
spinning  for  half  a  century  with  no  sign  of  fatigue 
and  with  scarcely  any  falling  off  in  freshness  ; 
poems  read  or  spoken  or  sung  at  all  manner  of 
gatherings,  public  and  private  ;  at  Harvard  com 
mencements,  class  days,  and  other  academic  anni 
versaries;  at  inaugurations,  centennials,  dedications 
of  cemeteries,  meetings  of  medical  associations, 
mercantile  libraries.  Burns  clubs  and  New  En 
gland  societies;  at  rural  festivals  and  city  fairs; 
openings  of  theaters,  layings  of  corner  stones,  birth- 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  175 

day  celebrations,  jubilees,  funerals,  commemora 
tion  services,  dinners  of  welcome  or  farewell  to 
Dickens,  Bryant,  Everett,  Whittier,  Longfellow, 
Grant,  Farragut,  the  Grand  Duke  Alexis,  the 
Chinese  Embassy  and  what  not.  Probably  no 
poet  of  any  age  or  clime  has  written  so  much  and 
so  well  to  order.  He  has  been  particularly  happy 
in  verses  of  a  convivial  kind,  toasts  for  big  civic 
feasts,  or  post-prandial  rhymes  for  the  petit  coinite 
— the  snug  little  dinners  of  the  chosen  few.  His 

"The  quaint  trick  to  cram  the  pithy  line 
That  cracks  so  crisply  over  bubbling  wine." 

And  although  he  could  write  on  occasion  a  Song 
for  a  Temperance  Dinner,  he  has  preferred  to  chant 
the  praise  of  the  punch  bowl  and  to 

"  feel  the  old  convivial  glow  (unaided)  o'er  me  stealing, 
The  warm,  champagny,  old-particular-brandy-punchy  feeling." 

It  would  be  impossible  to  enumerate  the  many 
good  things  of  this  sort  which  Holmes  has  written, 
full  of  wit  and  wisdom,  and  of  humor  lightly 
dashed  with  sentiment  and  sparkling  with  droll 
analogies,  sudden  puns,  and  unexpected  turns  of 
rhyme  and  phrase.  Among  the  best  of  them  are 
Nux  Postcoenatica,  A  Modest  Request,  Ode  for  a 
Social  Meeting,  The  Boys,  and  Rip  Van  Winkle, 
M.D.  Holmes's  favorite  measure,  in  his  longer 
poems,  is  the  heroic  couplet  which  Pope's  exam 
ple  seems  to  have  consecrated  forever  to  satiric 
and  didactic  verse.  He  writes  as  easily  in  this 


176  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

meter  as  if  it  were  prose,  and  with  much  of  Pope's 
epigrammatic  neatness.  He  also  manages  with 
facility  the  anapaestics  of  Moore  and  the  ballad 
stanza  which  Hood  had  made  the  vehicle  for  his 
drolleries.  It  cannot  be  expected  that  verses 
manufactured  to  pop  with  the  corks  and  fizz  with 
the  champagne  at  academic  banquets  should  much 
outlive  the  occasion  ;  or  that  the  habit  of  produc 
ing  such  verses  on  demand  should  foster  in  the 
producer  that  "  high  seriousness"  which  Matthew 
Arnold  asserts  to  be  one  mark  of  all  great  poetry. 
Holmes's  poetry  is  mostly  on  the  colloquial  level, 
excellent  society-verse,  but  even  in  its  serious 
moments  too  smart  and  too  pretty  to  be  taken 
very  gravely  ;  with  a  certain  glitter,  knowingness 
and  flippancy  about  it  and  an  absence  of  that  self- 
forgetfulness  and  intense  absorption  in  its  theme 
which  characterize  the  work  of  the  higher  imagina 
tion.  This  is  rather  the  product  of  fancy  and  wit. 
Wit,  indeed,  in  the  old  sense  of  quickness  in  the 
perception  of  analogies  is  the  staple  of  his  mind. 
His  resources  in  the  way  of  figure,  illustration,  al 
lusion  and  anecdote  are  wonderful.  Age  cannot 
wither  him  nor  custom*  stale  his  infinite  variety, 
and  there  is  as  much  powder  in  his  latest  pyro 
technics  as  in  the  rockets  which  he  sent  up  half 
a  century  ago.  Yet,  though  the  humorist  in  him 
rather  outweighs  the  poet,  he  has  written  a  few 
things,  like  the  Chambered  Nautilus  and  Homesick 
in  Heaven,  which  are  as  purely  and  deeply  poetic 
as  the  One-Hoss  Shay  and  the  Prologue  are  funny. 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  177 

Dr.  Holmes  is  not  of  the  stuff  of  which  idealists 
and  enthusiasts  are  made.  As  a  physician  and 
a  student  of  science,  the  facts  of  the  material  uni 
verse  have  counted  for  much  with  him.  His  clear, 
positive,  alert  intellect  was  always  impatient  of 
mysticism.  He  had  the  sharp  eye  of  the  satirist 
and  the  man  of  the  world  for  oddities  of  dress, 
dialect  and  manners.  Naturally  the  transcend 
ental  movement  struck  him  on  its  ludicrous  side, 
and  in  his  After-Dinner  Poem,  read  at  the  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  dinner  at  Cambridge  in  1843,  ne  na(l 
his  laugh  at  the  "Orphic  odes"  and  "runes"  of 
the  bedlamite  seer  and  bard  of  mystery 

"  Who  rides  a  beetle  which  he  calls  a  '  sphinx,' 
And  O  what  questions  asked  in  club-foot  rhyme 
Of  Earth  the  tongueless,  and  the  deaf-mute  Time  ! 
Here  babbling  '  Insight'  shouts  in  Nature's  ears 
His  last  conundrum  on  the  orbs  and  spheres  ; 
There  Self-inspection  sucks  its  little  thumb, 
With  '  Whence  am  I  ?  '  and  '  Wherefore  did  I  come  ? '  " 

Curiously  enough,  the  author  of  these  lines  lived 
to  write  an  appreciative  life  of  the  poet  who  wrote 
the  Sphinx.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  toryism  or 
social  conservatism  in  Holmes.  He  acknowledged 
a  preference  for  the  man  with  a  pedigree,  the  man 
who  owned  family  portraits,  had  been  brought  up 
in  familiarity  with  books,  and  could  pronounce 
"view"  correctly.  Readers  unhappily  not  of  the 
"  Brahmin  caste  of  New  England "  have  some 
times  resented  as  snobbishness  Holmes's  harping 
12 


178  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

on  "family,"  and  his  perpetual  application  of  cer 
tain  favorite  shibboleths  to  other  people's  ways  of 
speech.  "The  woman  who  calc'lates  is  lost." 

"  Learning  condemns  beyond  the  reach  of  hope 
The  careless  lips  that  speak  of  soap  for  soap.  .  .  . 
Do  put  your  accents  in  the  proper  spot  ; 
Don't,  let  me  beg  you,  don't  say  4  Ho\v  ? '  for  '  What  ?' 
The  things  named  '  pants  '  in  certain  documents, 
A  word  not  made  for  gentlemen,  but  'gents.'" 

With  the  rest  of  "society"  he  was  disposed  to 
ridicule  the  abolition  movement  as  a  crotchet  of 
the  eccentric  and  the  long-haired.  But  when  the 
civil  war  broke  out  he  lent  his  pen,  his  tongue, 
and  his  own  flesh  and  blood  to  the  cause  of  the 
Union.  The  individuality  of  Holmes's  writings 
comes  in  part  from  their  local  and  provincial  bias. 
He  has  been  the  laureate  of  Harvard  College 
and  the  bard  of  Boston  city,  an  urban  poet,  with 
a  cockneyish  fondness  for  old  Boston  ways  and 
things — the  Common  and  the  Frog  Pond,  Faneuil 
Hall  and  King's  Chapel  and  the  Old  South,  Bunk 
er  Hill,  Long  Wharf,  the  Tea  Party,  and  the  town 
crier.  It  was  Holmes  who  invented  the  playful 
saying  that  "  Boston  State  House  is  the  hub  of  the 
solar  system." 

In  1857  was  started  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  a 
magazine  which  has  published  a  good  share  of  the 
best  work  done  by  American  writers  within  the  past 
thirty  years.  Its  immediate  success  was  assured 
by  Dr.  Holmes's  brilliant  series  of  papers,  the 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  179 

Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table,  1858,  followed  at 
once  by  the  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table,  1859, 
and  later  by  the  Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table,  1873. 
The  Autocrat  is  its  author's  masterpiece,  and  holds 
the  fine  quintessence  of  his  humor,  his  scholarship, 
his  satire,  genial  observation,  and  ripe  experience 
of  men  and  cities.  The  form  is  as  unique  and 
original  as  the  contents,  being  something  between 
an  essay  and  a  drama;  a  succession  of  monologues 
or  table-talks  at  a  typical  American  boarding- 
house,  with  a  thread  of  story  running  through  the 
whole.  The  variety  of  mood  and  thought  is  so 
great  that  these  conversations  never  tire,  and  the 
prose  is  interspersed  with  some  of  the  author's 
choicest  verse.  The  Professor  at  the  Breakfast 
Table  followed  too  closely  on  the  heels  of  the  Au 
tocrat,  and  had  less  freshness.  The  third  number 
of  the  series  was  better,  and  was  pleasantly  reminis 
cent  and  slightly  garrulous,  Dr.  Holmes  being  now 
(1873)  sixty-four  years  old,  and  entitled  to  the 
gossiping  privilege  of  age.  The  personnel  of  the 
Breakfast  Table  series,  such  as  the  landlady  and 
the  landlady's  daughter  and  her  son,  Benjamin 
Franklin  ;  the  schoolmistress,  the  young  man 
named  John,  the  Divinity  Student,  the  Kohinoor, 
the  Sculpin,  the  Scarabaeus  and  the  Old  Gentle 
man  who  sits  opposite,  are  not  fully  drawn  char 
acters,  but  outlined  figures,  lightly  sketched — as  is 
the  Autocrat's  wont — by  means  of  some  trick  of 
speech,  or  dress,  or  feature,  but  they  are  quite  life 
like  enough  for  their  purpose,  which  is  mainly  to 


180  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

furnish    listeners  and   foils   to  the  eloquence  and 
wit  of  the  chief  talker. 

In  1860  and  1867  Holmes  entered  the  field  of 
fiction  with  two  "medicated  novels,"  Elsie  Venner 
and  the  Guardian  Angel.  The  first  of  these  was 
a  singular  tale,  whose  heroine  united  with  her  very 
fascinating  human  attributes  something  of  the  nat 
ure  of  a  serpent ;  her  mother  having  been  bitU  n 
by  a  rattlesnake  a  few  months  before  the  birth 
of  the  girl,  and  kept  alive  meanwhile  by  the 
use  of  powerful  antidotes.  The  heroine  of 
the  Guardian  Angel  inherited  lawless  instincts 
from  a  vein  of  Indian  blood  in  her  ancestry. 
These  two  books  were  studies  of  certain  medico- 
psychological  problems.  They  preached  Dr. 
Holmes's  favorite  doctrines  of  heredity  and  of  the 
modified  nature  of  moral  responsibility  by  reason 
of  transmitted  tendencies  which  limit  the  freedom 
of  the  will.  In  Elsie  Venner,  in  particular,  the 
weirdly  imaginative  and  speculative  character  of 
the  leading  motive  suggests  Hawthorne's  method 
in  fiction,  but  the  background  and  the  subsidiary 
figures  have  a  realism  that  is  in  abrupt  contrast 
with  this,  and  gives  a  kind  of  doubleness  and  want 
of  keeping  to  the  whole.  The  Yankee  characters, 
in  particular,  and  the  satirical  pictures  of  New 
England  country  life  are  open  to  the  charge  of 
caricature.  In  the  Guardian  An^el  the  figure  of 
Byles  Gridley,  the  old  scholar,  is  drawn  with  thor 
ough  sympathy,  and  though  some  of  his  acts  are 
improbable  he  is,  on  the  whole,  Holmes's  most 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  181 

vital  conception   in  the  region  of  dramatic  crea 
tion. 

James  Russell  Lowell  (1819-  ),  the  foremost 
of  American  critics  and  of  living  American  poets 
is,  like  Holmes,  a  native  of  Cambridge,  and,  like 
Emerson  and  Holmes,  a  clergyman's  son.  In 
1855  he  succeeded  Longfellow  as  Professor  of 
Modern  Languages  in  Harvard  College.  Of  late 
years  he  has  held  important  diplomatic  posts,  like 
Everett,  Irving,  Bancroft,  Motley,  and  other  Amer 
icans  distinguished  in  letters,  having  been  United 
States  Minister  to  Spain,  and,  under  two  adminis 
trations,  to  the  Court  of  St.  James.  Lowell  is  not 
so  spontaneously  and  exclusively  a  poet  as  Long 
fellow.  His  fame  has  been  of  slower  growth, 
and  his  popularity  with  the  average  reader  has 
never  been  so  great.  His  appeal  has  been  to  the 
few  rather  than  the  many,  to  an  audience  of 
scholars  and  of  the  judicious  rather  than  to  the 
"  groundlings  "  of  the  general  public.  Neverthe-f 
less  his  verse,  though  without  the  evenness,  in 
stinctive  grace,  and  unerring  good  taste  of  Long 
fellow's,  has  more  energy  and  a  stronger  intellect 
ual  fiber;  while  in  prose  he  is  very  greatly  the  su 
perior.  His  first  volume,  A  Year's  Life,  1841, 
gave  little  promise.  In  1843  he  started  a  maga 
zine,  the  Pioneer,  which  only  reached  its  third 
number,  though  it  counted  among  its  contributors 
Hawthorne,  Poe,  Whittier,  and  Miss  Barrett  (after 
ward  Mrs.  Browning)!  Asecond  volume  of  poems, 
printed  in  1844,  showed  a  distinct  advance,  in  such 


182  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

pieces  as  the  Shepherd  of  King  Admdus,  Rhotcus, 
a  classical  myth,  told  in  excellent  blank  verse,  and 
the  same  in  subject  with  one  of  Lander's  polished 
intaglios;  and  the  Legend  of  Britanny,  a  narrative 
poem,  which  had  fine  passages,  but  no  firmness  in 
the  management  of  the  story.  As  yet,  it  was  evi 
dent,  the  young  poet  had  not  found  his  theme. 
This  came  with  the  outbreak  of  the  Mexican  War, 
which  was  unpopular  in  Ne\v  England,  and  which 
the  Free  Soil  party  regarded  as  a  slaveholders'  war 
waged  without  provocation  against  a  sister  repub 
lic,  and  simply  for  the  purpose  of  extending  the 
/  area  of  slavery. 

/  In  1846,  accordingly,  the  Biglow  Papers  began 
I  to  appear  in  the  Boston  Courier,  and  were  collected 
and  published  in  book  form  in  1848.  These  were 
a  series  of  rhymed  satires  upon  the  government  and 
the  war  party,  written  in  the  Yankee  dialect,  and 
supposed  to  be  the  work  of  Hosea  Biglow,  a  home 
spun  genius  in  a  down-east  country  town,  whose 
letters  to  the  editor  were  indorsed  and  accom 
panied  by  the  comments  of  the  Rev.  Homer  Wil 
bur,  A.M.,  pastor  of  the  First  Church  in  Jaalam,  and 
(prospective)  member  of  many  learned  societies. 
The  first  paper  was  a  derisive  address  to  a  recruit 
ing  sergeant,  with  a  denunciation  of  the  "  nigger- 
drivin'  States"  and  the  "northern  dough-faces," 
a  plain  hint  that  the  North  would  do  better  to  se 
cede  than  to  continue  doing  dirty  work  for  the 
South,  and  an  expression  of  those  universal  peace 
doctrines  which  were  then  in  the  air,  and  to  which 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  183 

Longfellow  gave  se.ious  utterance  in  his  Occulta- 
tion  of  Orion. 

"  Ez  for  war,  I  call  it  murder — 

There  you  hev  it  plain  au'  fl-.it ; 
I  don't  want  to  go  no  furder 

Than  my  Testyment  for  that ; 
God  hez  said  so  plump  an'  fairly, 

It's  ez  long  as  it  is  broad, 
An'  you've  gut  to  git  up  airly 

Ef  you  want  to  take  in  God," 

The  second  number  was  a  versified  paraphrase  of 
a  letter  received  from  Mr.  Birdofredom  Sawin,  "a 
yung  feller  of  our  town  that  wuz  cussed  fool 
enuff  to  goe  atrottin  inter  Miss  Chiff  arter  a  drum 
and  fife,"  and  who  finds  when  he  gets  to  Mexico 
that 

"  This  kind  o'  sogerin'  aint  a  mite  like  our  October  trainin.'  " 

Of  the  subsequent  papers  the  best  was,  perhaps, 
What  Mr.  Robinson  Thinks,  an  election  ballad, 
which  caused  universal  laughter,  and  was  on  every 
body's  tongue. 

The  Biglow  Papers  remain  Lowell's  most  orig 
inal  contribution  to  American  literature.  They 
are,  all  in  all,  the  best  political  satires  in  the  lan 
guage,  and  unequaled  as  portraitures  of  the  Yan 
kee  character,  with  its  'cuteness,  its  homely  wit,  and 
its  latent  poetry.  Under  the  racy  humor  of  the 
dialect — which  became  in  Lowell's  hands  a  me 
dium  of  literary  expression  almost  as  effective  as 


184  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Burns's  Ayrshire  Scotch — burned  that  moral  en 
thusiasm  and  that  hatred  of  wrong  and  deification 
of  duty — "Stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God" — 
which,  in  the  tough  New  England  stock,  stands 
instead  of  the  passion  in  the  blood  of  southern 
races.  Lowell's  serious  poems  on  political  ques 
tions,  such  as  the  Present  Crisis,  Ode  to  Freedom 
and  the  Capture  of  Fugitive  Slaves,  have  the  old 
Puritan  fervor,  and  such  lines  as 

"  They  are  slaves  who  dare  not  be 
In  the  right  with  two  or  three," 

and  the  passage  beginning 

"  Truth  forever  on  the  scaffold,  Wrong  forever  on  the  throne," 

became  watchwords  in  the  conflict  against  slavery 
and  disunion.  Some  of  these  were  published  in 
his  volume  of  1848  and  the  collected  edition  of 
his  poems,  in  two  volumes,  issued  in  1850.  These 
also  included  his  most  ambitious  narrative  poem, 
the  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal,  an  allegorical  and  spir 
itual  treatment  of  one  of  the  legends  of  the  Holy 
Grail.  Lowell's  genius  was  not  epical,  but  lyric 
and  didactic.  The  merit  of  Sir  Launfal  is  not  in 
the  telling  of  the  story,  but  in  the  beautiful  de 
scriptive  episodes,  one  of  which,  commencing, 

"  And  what  is  so  rare  as  a  day  in  June  ? 
Then  if  ever  come  perfect  days  ;  " 

is  as  current  as  any  thing  that  he  has  written.  It 
is  significant  of  the  lack  of  a  natural  impulse  to- 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  185 

ward  narrative  invention  in  Lowell,  that,  unlike 
Longfellow  and  Holmes,  he  never  tried  his  hand 
at  a  novel.  One  of  the  most  important  parts  of  a 
novelist's  equipment  he  certainly  possesses;  name 
ly,  an  insight  into  character,  and  an  ability  to  de 
lineate  it.  This  gift  is  seen  especially  in  his  sketch 
of  Parson  Wilbur,  who  edited  the  Biglow  Papers 
with  a  delightfully  pedantic  introduction,  glossary, 
and  notes;  in  the  prose  essay  On  a  Certain  Conde 
scension  in  Foreigners,  and  in  the  uncompleted 
poem,  Fitz-Adams  Story.  See  also»the  sketch  of 
Captain  Underbill  in  the  essay  on  New  England 
Two  Centuries  Ago. 

The  Biglow  Papers  when  brought  out  in  a 
volume  were  prefaced  by  imaginary  notices  of 
the  press,  including  a  capital  parody  of  Carlyle, 
and  a  reprint  from  the  "  Jaalam  Independent 
Blunderbuss,"  of  the  first  sketch — afterward  ampli 
fied  and  enriched — of  that  perfect  Yankee  idyl,  the 
CourtM .  Between  1862  and  1865  a  second  series 
of  Biglow  Papers  appeared,  called  out  by  the 
events  of  the  civil  war.  Some  of  these,  as,  for  in 
stance,  Jonathan  to  John,  a  remonstrance  with  En 
gland  for  her  unfriendly  attitude  toward  the  North, 
were  not  inferior  to  any  thing  in  the  earlier  series  ; 
and  others  were  even  superior  as  poems,  equal 
indeed,  in  pathos  and  intensity  to  any  thing  that 
Lowell  has  written  in  his  professedly  serious 
verse.  In  such  passages  the  dialect  wears  rather 
thin,  and  there  is  a  certain  incongruity  between 
the  rustic  spelling  and  the  vivid  beauty  and  power 


1 86  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

and  the  figurative  cast   of  the   phrase  in  stanzas 
like  the  following  : 

"  Wut's  words  to  them  whose  faith  an'  truth 

On  war's  red  techstone  rang  true  metal, 
Who  ventered  life  an'  love  an'  youth 

For  the  gret  prize  o'  death  in  battle  ? 
To  him  who,  deadly  hurt,  agen 

Flashed  on  afore  the  charge's  thunder, 
Tippin'  with  fire  the  bolt  of  men 

That  rived  the  rebel  line  asunder  ?  " 

Charles  Stunner,  a  somewhat  heavy  person,  with 
little  sense  of  humor,  wished  that  the  author  of  the 
Bigloiv  Papers  "could  have  used  good  English." 
In  the  lines  just  quoted,  indeed,  the  bad  English 
adds  nothing  to  the  effect.  In  1848  Lowell  wrote  A 
Fable  for  Critics,  something  after  the  style  of  Sir 
John  Suckling's  Session  of  the  Poets ;  a  piece  of 
rollicking  doggerel  in  which  he  surveyed  the  Amer 
ican  Parnassus,  scattering  about  headlong  fun, 
sharp  satire  and  sound  criticism  in  equal  propor 
tion.  Never  an  industrious  workman,  like  Long 
fellow,  at  the  poetic  craft,  but  preferring  to  wait 
for  the  mood  to  seize  him,  he  allowed  eighteen 
years  to  go  by,  from  1850  to  1868,  before  publish 
ing  another  volume  of  verse.  In  the  latter  year 
appeared  Under  the  Willows,  which  contains  some 
of  his  ripest  and  most  perfect  work  ;  notably  A 
Winter  Evening  Hymn  to  my  Fire,  with  its  noble  and 
touching  close — suggested  by,  perhaps,  at  any  rate 
recalling,  the  dedication  of  Goethe's  Faust, 

"  Ihr  naht  euch  wieder,  schwankende  Gestalten  ;  " 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  187 

the  subtle  Footpath  and  In  the  Twilight,  the  love 
ly  little  poems  Auf  Wiedersehen  and  After  the 
Funeral,  and  a  number  of  spirited  political  pieces, 
such  as  Villa  Franca,  and  the  Washers  of  the 
Shroud.  This  volume  contained  also  his  Ode 
Recited  at  the  Harvard  Commemoration  in  1865. 
This,  although  uneven,  is  one  of  the  finest  occa 
sional  poems  in  the  language,  and  the  most  impor 
tant  contribution  which  our  civil  war  has  made  to 
song.  It  was  charged  with  the  grave  emotion  of 
one  who  not  only  shared  the  patriotic  grief  and 
exultation  of  his  alma  mater  in  the  sacrifice  of 
her  sons,  but  who  felt  a  more  personal  sorrow  in 
the  loss  of  kindred  of  his  own,  fallen  in  the  front  of 
battle.  Particularly  noteworthy  in  this  memorial 
ode  are  the  tribute  to  Abraham  Lincoln,  the  third 
strophe,  beginning,  "Many  loved  Truth  :"  the  ex 
ordium — u  O  Beautiful !  my  Country  !  ours  once 
more  !  "  and  the  close  of  the  eighth  strophe,  where 
the  poet  chants  of  the  youthful  heroes  who 

"Come  transfigured  back, 

Secure  from  change  in  their  high-hearted  ways, 
Beautiful  evermore  and  with  the  rays 
Of  morn  on  their  white  Shields  of  Expectation." 

From  1857  to  1862  Lowell  edited  the  Atlantic 
Monthly^  and  from  1863  to  1872  the  North  Ameri 
can  Review.  His  prose,  beginning  with  an  early 
volume  of  Conversations  on  Some  of  the  Old  Poets, 
1844,  has  consisted  mainly  of  critical  essnys  on  in 
dividual  writers,  such  as  Dante,  Chaucer,  Spenser. 


1 88  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Emerson,  Shakespere,  Thoreau,  Pope,  Carlyle,  etc., 
together  with  papers  of  a  more  miscellaneous  kind, 
like  Witchcraft,  New  England  Two  Centuries  Ago, 
My  Garden  Acquaintance,  A  Good  Word  for  Winter, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  etc.,  etc.  Two  volumes  of  these 
were  published  in  1870  and  1876,  under  the  title 
Among  My  Books,  and  another,  My  Study  Win 
dows,  in  1871.  As  a  literary  critic  Lowell  ranks 
easily  among  the  first  of  living  writers.  His 
scholarship  is  thorough,  his  judgment  sure,  and 
he  pours  out  upon  his  page  an  unwithholding 
wealth  of  knowledge,  humor,  wit  and  imagina 
tion  from  the  fullness  of  an  overflowing  mind. 
His  prose  has  not  the  chastened  correctness  and 
"  low  tone"  of  Matthew  Arnold's.  It  is  rich,  ex 
uberant,  and  sometimes  over  fanciful,  running 
away  into  excesses  of  allusion  or  following  the 
lead  of  a  chance  pun  so  as  sometimes  to  lay  itself 
open  to  the  charge  of  pedantry  and  bad  taste. 
Lowell's  resources  in  the  way  of  illustration  and 
comparison  are  endless,  and  the  readiness  of  his 
wit  and  his  delight  in  using  it  put  many  tempta 
tions  in  his  way.  Purists  in  style  accordingly  take 
offense  at  his  saying  that  "  Milton  is  the  only  man 
who  ever  got  much  poetry  out  of  a  cataract,  and 
that  was  a  cataract  in  his  eye  ;  "  or  of  his  speak 
ing  of  "  a  gentleman  for  whom  the  bottle  before 
him  reversed  the  wonder  of  the  stereoscope  and 
substituted  the  Gaston  v  for  the  b  in  binocular," 
which  is  certainly  a  puzzling  and  roundabout 
fashion  of  telling  us  that  he  had  drunk  so  much 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  189 

that  he  saw  double.  The  critics  also  find  fault 
with  his  coining  such  words  as  "undisprivacied  " 
and  with  his  writing  such  lines  as  the  famous  one 
• — from  the  Cathedral,  1870 — 

"  Spume-sliding  down  the  baffled  decuman." 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  his  style  lacks  the 
crowning  grace  of  simplicity,  but  it  is  precisely  by 
reason  of  its  allusive  quality  that  scholarly  readers 
take  pleasure  in  it.  They  like  a  diction  that  has 
stuff  in  it  and  is  woven  thick,  and  where  a  thing  is 
said  in  such  a  way  as  to  recall  many  other  things. 
Mention  should  be  made,  in  connection  with 
this  Cambridge  circle,  of  one  writer  who  touched 
its  circumference  briefly.  This  was  Sylvester  Judd, 
a  graduate  of  Yale,  who  entered  the  Harvard 
Divinity  School  in  1837  and  in  1840  became  min 
ister  of  a  Unitarian  church  in  Augusta,  Maine. 
Judd  published  several  books,  but  the  only  one 
of  them  at  all  rememberable  was  Margaret,  1845, 
a  novel  of  which  Lowell  said  in  A  Fable  for  Critics 
that  it  was '' the  first  Yankee  book  with  the  soul 
of  Down  East  in  it."  It  was  very  imperfect  in  point 
of  art,  and  its  second  part — a  rhapsodical  descrip 
tion  of  a  sort  of  Unitarian  Utopia — is  quite  un 
readable.  But  in  the  delineation  of  the  few  chief 
characters  and  of  the  rude,  wild  life  of  an  outly 
ing  New  England  township  just  after  the  close  of 
the  revolutionary  war,  as  well  as  in  the  tragic 
power  of  the  catastrophe,  there  was  genius  of  a 
high  order, 


190  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

As  the  country  has  grown  older  and  more  popu 
lous,  and  works  in  all  departments  of  thought  have 
multiplied,  it  becomes  necessary  to  draw  more 
strictly  the  line  between  the  literature  of  knowledge 
and  the  literature  of  power.  Political  history,  in 
and  of  itself,  scarcely  falls  within  the  limits  of  this 
sketch,  and  yet  it  cannot  be  altogether  dismissed1, 
for  the  historian's  art  at  its  highest  demands  im 
agination,  narrative  skill,  and  a  sense  of  unity 
and  proportion  in  the  selection  and  arrangement 
of  his  facts,  all  of  which  are  literary  qualities.  It 
is  significant  that  many  of  our  best  historians 
have  begun  authorship  in  the  domain  of  imag 
inative  literature  :  Bancroft  with  an  early  volume 
of  poems;  Motley  with  his  historical  romances 
Merry  Mount  and  Morton's  Hope;  and  Parkin  :m 
with  a  novel,  Vassall  Morton.  The  oldest  of  that 
modern  group  of  writers  that  have  given  America 
an  honorable  position  in  the  historical  literature 
of  the  world  was  William  Hickling  Prescott 
(1796-1859.)  Prescott  chose  for  his  theme  the 
history  of  the  Spanish  conquests  in  the  New 
World,  a  subject  full  of  romantic  incident  and  sus 
ceptible  of  that  glowing  and  perhaps  slightly  over 
gorgeous  coloring  which  he  laid  on  with  a  liberal 
hand.  His  completed  histories,  in  their  order,  are 
the  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  1837;  the 
Conquest  of  Mexico,  1843 — a  topic  which  Irving 
had  relinquished  to  him  ;  and  the  Conquest  of  Peru, 
1847.  Prescott  was  fortunate  in  being  born  to 
leisure  and  fortune,  but  he  had  difficulties  of  an- 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  191 

other  kind  to  overcome.  He  was  nearly  blind, 
and  had  to  teach  himself  Spanish  and  look  up  au 
thorities  through  the  help  of  others  and  to  write 
with  a  noctograph  or  by  amanuenses. 

George  Bancroft  (1800-  )  issued  the  first  vol 
ume  of  his  great  History  of  the  United  States  in 
1834,  and  exactly  half  a  century  later  the  final 
volume  of  the  work,  bringing  the  subject  down  to 
1789.  Bancroft  had  studied  at  Gottingen  and 
imbibed  from  the  German  historian  Heeren  the 
scientific  method  of  historical  study.  He  had  ac 
cess  to  original  sources,  in  the  nature  of  collec 
tions  and  state  papers  in  the  governmental  ar 
chives  of  Europe,  of  which  no  American  had 
hitherto  been  able  to  avail  himself.  His  history 
in  thoroughness  of  treatment  leaves  nothing  to  be 
desired,  and  has  become  the  standard  authority  on 
the  subject.  As  a  literary  performance  merely, 
it  is  somewhat  wanting  in  flavor,  Bancroft's 
manner  being  heavy  and  stiff  when  compared 
with  Motley's  or  Parkman's.  The  historian's 
services  to  his  country  have  been  publicly  recog 
nized  by  his  successive  appointments  as  Secretary 
of  the  Navy,  Minister  to  England,  and  Minister 
to  Germany. 

The  greatest,  on  the  whole,  of  American  histo 
rians  was  John  Lothrop  Motley  (1814-1877),  who, 
like  Bancroft,  was  a  student  at  Gottingen  and 
United  States  Minister  to  England.  His  Rise  of 
the  Dutch  Republic,  1856,  and  History  of  the  United 
Netherlands,  published  in  installments  from  1861  to 


192  AMERICAN   LITERATURE. 

1868,  equaled  Bancroft's  work  in  scientific  thor 
oughness  and  philosophic  grasp,  and  Prescott's  in 
the  picturesque  brilliancy  of  the  narrative,  while  it 
excelled  them  both  in  its  masterly  analysis  of  great 
historic  characters,  reminding  the  reader,  in  this 
particular,  of  Macaulay's  figure  painting,  The 
episodes  of  the  siege  of  Antwerp  and  the  sack  of 
the  cathedral,  and  of  the  defeat  and  wreck  of  the 
Spanish  Armada,  are  as  graphic  as  Prescott's  fa 
mous  description  of  Cortez's  capture  of  the  city  of 
Mexico;  while  the  elder  historian  has  nothing  to 
compare  with  Motley's  vivid  personal  sketches  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  Philip  the  Second,  Henry  of 
Navarre,  and  William  the  Silent.  The  Life  of 
John  of  Barneveld,  1874,  completed  this  series  of 
studies  upon  the  history  of  the  Netherlands,  a 
theme  to  which  Motley  was  attracted  because  the 
heroic  struggle  of  the  Dutch  for  liberty  offered,  in 
some  respects,  a  parallel  to  the  growth  of  political 
independence  in  Anglo-Saxon  communities,  and 
especially  in  his  own  America. 

The  last  of  these  Massachusetts  historical  writ 
ers  whom  we  shall  mention  is  Francis  Parkman 
(1823-  ),  whose  subject  has  the  advantage  of  being 
thoroughly  American.  His  Oregon  Trail,  1847,  a 
series  of  sketches  of  prairie  and  Rocky  Mountain 
life,  originally  contributed  to  the  Knickerbocker 
Magazine,  displays  his  early  interest  in  the  Amer 
ican  Indians.  In  185  r  appeared  his  first  historical 
work,  the  Conspiracy  of  Poutiac.  This  has  been 
followed  by  the  series  entitled  France  and  England 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  193 

in  North  America,  the  six  successive  parts  of  which 
are  as  follows :  the  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New 
World:  the  Jesuits  in  North  America:  La  Salic 
and  the  Discovery  of  the  Great  West :  the  Old  Re"- 
%ime  in  Canada  :  Count  Frontenac  and  New  France  j 
and  Montcalm  and  Wolfe.  These  narratives  have  a 
wonderful  vividness,  and  a  romantic  interest  not 
inferior  to  Cooper's  novels.  Parkman  made  him 
self  personally  familiar  with  the  scenes  which  he 
described,  and  some  of  the  best  descriptions  of 
American  woods  and  waters  are  to  be  found  in 
his  histories.  If  any  fault  is  to  be  found  with  his 
books,  indeed,  it  is  that  their  picturesqueness  and 
"fine  writing"  are  a  little  in  excess. 

The  political  literature  of  the  years  from  1837 
to  1 86 1  hinged  upon  the  antislavery  struggle.  In 
this  "  irrepressible  conflict "  Massachusetts  led  the 
van.  Garrison  had  written  in  his  Liberator,  in 
1830,  "I  will  be  as  harsh  as  truth  and  as  uncom 
promising  as  justice.  I  am  in  earnest ;  I  will  not 
equivocate;  I  will  not  excuse;  I  will  not  retreat  a 
single  inch;  and  I  will  be  heard."  But  the  Gar- 
risonian  abolitionists  remained  for  a  long  time, 
even  in  the  North,  a  small  and  despised  faction. 
It  was  a  great  point  gained  when  men  of  educa 
tion  and  social  standing  like  Wendell  Phillips 
(1811-1884),  and  Charles  Sumner  (1811-1874), 
joined  themselves  to  the  cause.  Both  of  these 
were  graduates  of  Harvard  and  men  of  scholarly 
pursuits.  They  became  the  representative  orators 
of  the  antislavery  party,  Phillips  on  the  platform 
13 


194  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

and  Sumner  in  the  Senate.  The  former  first 
came  before  the  public  in  his  fiery  speech,  deliv 
ered  in  Faneuil  Hall  December  8,  1837,  before  a 
meeting  called  to  denounce  the  murder  of  Love- 
joy,  who  had  been  killed  at  Alton,  111.,  while  de 
fending  his  press  against  a  pro-slavery  mob. 
Thenceforth  Phillips's  voice  was  never  idle  in 
behalf  of  the  slave.  His  eloquence  was  impas 
sioned  and  direct,  and  his  English  singularly  pure, 
simple,  and  nervous.  He  is  perhaps  nearer  to 
Demosthenes  than  any  other  American  orator. 
He  was  a  most  fascinating  platform  speaker  on 
themes  outside  of  politics,  and  his  lecture  on  the 
Lost  Arts  was  a  favorite  with  audiences  of  all 
sorts. 

Sumner  was  a  man  of  intellectual  tastes,  who 
entered  politics  reluctantly,  and  only  in  obedience 
to  the  resistless  leading  of  his  conscience.  He 
was  a  student  of  literature  and  art ;  a  connoisseur 
of  engravings,  for  example,  of  which  he  made  a 
valuable  collection.  He  was  fond  of  books,  con 
versation,  and  foreign  travel,  and  in  Europe,  while 
still  a  young  man,  had  made  a  remarkable  impres 
sion  in  society.  But  he  left  all  this  for  public  life, 
and  in  1851  was  elected,  as  Webster's  successor,  to 
the  Senate  of  the  United  States.  Thereafter  he 
remained  the  leader  of  the  Abolitionists  in  Con 
gress  until  slavery  was  abolished.  His  influence 
throughout  the  North  was  greatly  increased  by  the 
brutal  attack  upon  him  in  the  Senate  chamber  in 
1856  by  "  Bully  Brooks  "  of  South  Carolina.  Sum- 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  SCHOLARS.  195 

ner's  oratory  was  stately  and  somewhat  labored. 
While  speaking  he  always  seemed,  as  has  been 
wittily  said,  to  be  surveying  a  "broad  landscape 
of  his  own  convictions."  His  most  impressive 
qualities  as  a  speaker  were  his  intense  moral  ear 
nestness  and  his  thorough  knowledge  of  his  sub 
ject.  The  most  telling  of  his  parliamentary 
speeches  are  perhaps  his  speech  On  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  Bill,  of  February  3,  1854,  and  On  the 
Crime  against  Kansas,  May  19  and  20,  1856  ;  of 
his  platform  addresses,  the  oration  on  the  True 
Grandeur  of  Nations. 

1.  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow.     Voices  of  the 
Night.     The  Skeleton  in  Armor.     The  Wreck  of 
the    Hesperus.      The   Village    Blacksmith.      The 
Belfry  of  Bruges  and   Other  Poems  (1846).     By 
the    Seaside.      Hiawatha.      Tales   of   a   Wayside 
Inn. 

2.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.      Autocrat  of   the 
Breakfast  Table.     Elsie  Venner.     Old  Ironsides. 
The  Last  Leaf.     My  Aunt.     The  Music-Grinders. 
On  Lending  a  Punch  Bowl.     Nux  Postcoenatica. 
A  Modest  Request.     The  Living  Temple.     Meet 
ing  of  the  Alumni  of  Harvard  College.     Homesick 
in  Heaven.     Epilogue  to  the  Breakfast  Table  Se 
ries.     The  Boys.     Dorothy.     The  Iron  Gate. 

3.  James  Russell  Lowell.     The  Biglow  Papers 
(two    series).       Under    the    Willows    and    Other 
Poems.     1868.    Rhcecus.     The  Shepherd  of  King 
Admetus.     The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal.     The  Pres- 


196  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

ent  Crisis.  The  Dandelion.  The  Birch  Tree. 
Beaver  Brook.  Essays  on  Chaucer :  Shakspcre 
Once  More  :  Dryden:  Emerson :  the  Lecturer : 
Thoreau  :  My  Garden  Acquaintance  :  A  Good 
Word  for  Winter :  A  Certain  Condescension  in 
Foreigners. 

4.  William  Hickling  Prescott.      The  Conquest 
of  Mexico. 

5.  John  Lothrop  Motley.     The  United  Nether 
lands. 

6.  Francis  Parkman.     The  Oregon  Trail.     The 
Jesuits  in  North  America. 

7.  Representative  American  Orations;  volume  v. 
Edited  by  Alexander  Johnston.     New  York  :   G. 
P.  Putnam's  Sons.     1884. 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  197 


CHAPTER  VI. 

LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES. 
1837-1861. 

LITERATURE  as  a  profession  has  hardly  existed 
in  the  United  States  until  very  recently.  Even 
now  the  number  of  those  who  support  themselves 
by  purely  literary  work  is  small,  although  the 
growth  of  the  reading  public  and  the  establish 
ment  of  great  magazines,  such  as  Harper 's,  the 
Century,  and  the  Atlantic,  have  made  a  market  for 
intellectual  wares  which  forty  years  ago  would 
have  seemed  a  godsend  to  poorly  paid  Bohemians 
like  Poe  or  obscure  men  of  genius  like  Hawthorne. 
About  1840  two  Philadelphia  magazines — Godey's 
Lady's  Book  and  Graham's  Monthly — began  to  pay 
their  contributors  twelve  dollars  a  page,  a  price 
then  thought  wildly  munificent.  But  the  first 
magazine  of  the  modern  type  was  Harper's 
Monthly,  founded  in  1850.  American  books  have 
always  suffered,  and  still  continue  to  suffer,  from 
the  want  of  an  international  copyright,  which  has 
flooded  the  country  with  cheap  reprints  and  trans 
lations  of  foreign  works,  with  which  the  domestic 
product  has  been  unable  to  contend  on  such  un 
even  terms.  With  the  first  ocean  steamers  there 


198  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

started  up  a  class  of  large-paged  weeklies  in  New 
York  and  elsewhere,  such  as  Brother  Jonathan,  the 
New  World,  and  the  Corsair,  which  furnished  their 
readers  with  the  freshest  writings  of  Dickens  and 
Bulwer  and  other  British  celebrities  within  a  fort 
night  after  their  appearance  in  London.  This  still 
further  restricted  the  profits  of  native  authors  and 
nearly  drove  them  from  the  field  of  periodical  lit 
erature.  By  special  arrangement  the  novels  of 
Thackeray  and  other  English  writers  were  printed 
in  Harper 's  in  installments  simultaneously  with 
their  issue  in  English  periodicals.  The  Atlantic 
was  the  first  of  our  magazines  which  was  founded 
expressly  for  the  encouragement,  of  home  talent, 
and  which  had  a  purely  Yankee  flavor.  Journal 
ism  was  the  profession  which  naturally  attracted 
men  of  letters,  as  having  most  in  common  with 
their  chosen  work  and  as  giving  them  a  medium, 
under  their  own  control,  through  which  they  could 
address  the  public.  A  few  favored  scholars,  like 
Prescott,  were  made  independent  by  the  possession 
of  private  fortunes.  Others,  like  Holmes,  Long 
fellow,  and  Lowell,  gave  to  literature  such  leisure 
as  they  could  get  in  the  intervals  of  an  active  pro 
fession  or  of  college  work.  Still  others,  like  Emer 
son  and  Thoreau,  by  living  in  the  country  and 
making  their  modest  competence — eked  out  in 
Emerson's  case  by  lecturing  here  and  there — suf 
fice  for  their  simple  needs,  secured  themselves 
freedom  from  the  restraints  of  any  regular  calling. 
But  in  default  of  some  such  pou  sto  our  men  of 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  199 

letters  have  usually  sought  the  cities  and  allied 
themselves  with  the  press.  It  will  be  remembered 
that  Lowell  started  a  short-lived  magazine  on  his 
own  account,  and  that  he  afterward  edited  the  At 
lantic  and  the  North  American.  Also  that  Ripley 
and  Charles  A.  Dana  betook  themselves  to  jour 
nalism  after  the  break  up  of  the  Brook  Farm 
Community. 

In  the  same  way  William  Cullen  Bryanf  (1794- 
1878),  the  earliest  American  poet  of  importance, 
whose  impulses  drew  him  to  the  solitudes  of  na 
ture,  was  compelled  to  gain  a  livelihood  by  con 
ducting  a  daily  newspaper;  or,  as  he  himself  puts 


"  Forced  to  drudge  for  the  dregs  of  men, 

And  scrawl  strange  words  with  the  barbarous  pen." 

Bryant  was  born  at  Cummington,  in  Berkshire,  the 
westernmost  county  of  Massachusetts.  After  two 
years  in  Williams  College  he  studied  law,  and 
practiced  for  nine  years  as  a  country  lawyer  in 
Plainfield  and  Great  Barrington.  Following  the 
line  of  the  Housatonic  Valley,  the  social  and  theo 
logical  affiliations  of  Berkshire  have  always  been 
closer  with  Connecticut  and  New  York  than  with 
Boston  and  Eastern  Massachusetts.  Accordingly, 
when,  in  1825,  Bryant  yielded  to  the  attractions  of 
a  literary  career,  he  betook  himself  to  New  York 
city,  where,  after  a  brief  experiment  in  conducting 
a  monthly  magazine,  the  New  York  Review  and 
Athenceum,  he  assumed  the  editorship  of  the  Even- 


2oo  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

ing  Post,  a  Democratic  and  Free-trade  journal,  with 
which  he  remained  connected  till  his  death.  He 
already  had  a  reputation  as  a  poet  when  he  entered 
the  ranks  of  metropolitan  journalism.  In  1816  his 
Thanatopsis\i^  been  published  in  the  North  Amer 
ican  Review,  and  had  attracted  immediate  and  gen 
eral  admiration.  It  had  been  finished,  indeed,  two 
years  before,  when  the  poet  was  only  in  his  nine 
teenth  year,  and  was  a  wonderful  instance  of  pre 
cocity.  The  thought  in  this  stately  hymn  was  not 
that  of  a  young  man,  but  of  a  sage  who  has  reflected 
long  upon  the  universality,  the  necessity,  and  the 
majesty  of  death.  Bryant's  blank  verse  when  at 
its  best,  as  in  Thanatopsis  and  the  Forest  Hymn,  is 
extremely  noble.  In  gravity  and  dignity  it  is  sur 
passed  by  no  English  blank  verse  of  this  century, 
though  in  rich  and  various  modulation  it  falls  be 
low  Tennyson's  Ulysses  and  Morte  d1  Arthur.  It 
was  characteristic  of  Bryant's  limitations  that  he 
came  thus  early  into  possession  of  his  faculty. 
His  range  was  always  a  narrow  one*  and  about  his 
poetry,  as  a  whole,  there  is  a  certain  coldness,  rig 
idity,  and  solemnity.  His  fixed  position  among 
American  poets  is  described  in  his  own  Hymn  to 
the  North  Star : 

"  And  thou  dost  see  them  rise, 

Star  of  the  pole  !  and  thou  dost  see  them  set. 
Alone,  in  thy  cold  skies, 

Thou  keep'st  thy  old,  unmoving  station  yet, 
Nor  join'st  the  dances  of  that  glittering  train, 
Nor  dipp'st  thy  virgin  orb  in  the  blue  western  main." 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  201 

In  1821  he  read  the  Ages,  a  didactic  poem  in 
thirty-five  stanzas,  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  So 
ciety  at  Cambridge,  and  in  the  same  year  brought 
out  his  first  volume  of  poems.  A  second  collec 
tion  appeared  in  1832,  which  was  printed  in  Lon 
don  under  the  auspices  of  Washington  Irving. 
Bryant  was  the  first  American  poet  who  had  much 
of  an  audience  in  England,  and  Wordsworth  is 
said  to  have  learned  Thanatopsis  by  heart.  Bry 
ant  was,  indeed,  in  a  measure,  a  scholar  of  Words 
worth's  school,  and  his  place  among  American 
poets  corresponds  roughly,  though  not  precisely, 
to  Wordsworth's  among  English  poets.  With  no 
humor,  with  somewhat  restricted  sympathies,  with 
little  flexibility  or  openness  to  new  impressions, 
but  gifted  with  a  high,  austere  imagination,  Bryant 
became  the  meditative  poet  of  nature.  His  best 
poems  are  those  in  which  he  draws  lessons  from 
nature,  or  sings  of  its  calming,  purifying,  and 
bracing  influences  upon  the  human  soul.  His 
office,  in  other  words,  is  the  same  which  Matthew 
Arnold  asserts  to  be  the  peculiar  office  of  modern 
poetry,  "the  moral  interpretation  of  nature." 
Poems  of  this  class  are  Green  River,  To  a  Water 
fowl,  June,  the  Death  of  the  Flowers,  and  the 
Evening  Wind.  The  song,  "O  fairest  of  the  Rural 
Maids,"  which  has  more  fancy  than  is  common  in 
Bryant,  and  which  Poe  pronounced  his  best  poem, 
has  an  obvious  resemblance  to  Wordsworth's 
"  Three  years  she  grew  in  sun  and  shade,"  and 
both  of  these  nameless  pieces  might  fitly  be  end- 


202  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

tied — as  Wordsworth's  is  in  Mr.  Palgrave's  Golden 
Treasury— "  The  Education  of  Nature." 

Although  Bryant's  career  is  identified  with  New 
York,  his  poetry  is  all  of  New  England.  His 
heart  was  always  turning  back  fondly  to  the  woods 
and  streams  of  the  Berkshire  hills.  There  was 
nothing  of  that  urban  strain  in  him  which  appears 
in  Holmes  and  Willis.  He  was,  in  especial,  the 
poet  of  autumn,  of  the  American  October  and  the 
New  England  Indian  Summer,  that  season  of 
"  dropping  nuts  "  and  "  smoky  light,"  to  whose 
subtle  analogy  with  the  decay  of  the  young  by  the 
New  England  disease,  consumption,  he  gave  such 
tender  expression  in  the  Death  of  the  Flowers  ; 
and  amid  whose  "  bright,  late  quiet,"  he  wished 
himself  to  pass  away.  Bryant  is  our  poet  of  "  the 
melancholy  days,"  as  Lowell  is  of  June.  If,  by 
chance,  he  touches  upon  June,  it  is  not  with  the 
exultant  gladness  of  Lowell  in  meadows  full  of 
bobolinks,  and  in  the  summer  day  that  is 

"  — simply  perfect  from  its  own  resource 
As  to  the  bee  the  new  campanula's 
Illuminate  seclusion  swung  in  air." 

Rather,  the  stir  of  new  life  in  the  clod  suggests  to 
Bryant  by  contrast  the  thought  of  death;  and  there 
is  nowhere  in  his  poetry  a  passage  of  deeper  feel 
ing  than  the  closing  stanzas  of  June,  in  which  he 
speaks  of  himself,  by  anticipation,  as  of  one 

"Whose  part  in  all  the  pomp  that  fills 
The  circuit  of  the  summer  hills 
Is — that  his  grave  is  green." 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  203 

Bryant  is,  par  excellence,  the  poet  of  New  England 
wild  flowers,  the  yellow  violet,  the  fringed  gentian 
— to  each  of  which  he  dedicated  an  entire  poem — 
the  orchis  and  the  golden  rod,  "  the  aster  in  the 
wood  and  the  yellow  sunflower  by  the  brook." 
With  these  his  name  will  be  associated  as  Words 
worth's  with  the  daffodil  and  the  lesser  celandine, 
and  Emerson's  with  the  rhodora. 

Except  when  writing  of  nature  he  was  apt  to  be 
commonplace,  and  there  are  not  many  such  ener 
getic  lines  in  his  purely  reflective  verse  as  these 
famous  ones  from  the  Battle  Field : 

"  Truth  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again; 

The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers  ; 
But  Error,  wounded,  writhes  in  pain, 

And  dies  among  his  worshipers." 

He  added  but  slowly  to  the  number  of  his  poems, 
publishing  a  new  collection  in  1840,  another  in 
1844,  and  Thirty  Poems  in  1864.  His  work  at  all 
ages  was  remarkably  even.  Thanatopsis  was  as 
mature  as  any  thing  that  he  wrote  afterward,  and 
among  his  later  pieces,  the  Planting  of  the  Apple 
Tree  and  the  Flood  of  Years  were  as  fresh  as  any 
thing  that  he  had  written  in  the  first  flush  of  youth. 
Bryant's  poetic  style  was  always  pure  and  correct, 
without  any  tincture  of  affectation  or  extravagance. 
His  prose  writings  are  not  important,  consisting 
mainly  of  papers  of  the  Salmagundi  variety  con 
tributed  to  the  Talisman,  an  annual  published  in 
1827-30;  some  rather  sketchy  stories,  Tales  of  the 


204  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Glauber  Spa,  1832;  and  impressions  of  Europe, 
entitled,  Letters  of  a  Traveler,  issued  in  two  series, 
in  1849  and  1858.  In  1869  and  1871  appeared  his 
blank-verse  translations  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  a 
remarkable  achievement  for  a  man  of  his  age,  and 
not  excelled,  upon  the  whole,  by  any  recent  met 
rical  version  of  Homer  in  the  English  tongue 
Bryant's  half  century  of  service  as  the  editor  of 
a  daily  paper  should  not  be  overlooked.  The 
Evening  Post,  under  his  management,  was  always 
honest,  gentlemanly,  and  courageous,  and  did  much 
to  raise  the  tone  of  journalism  in  New  York. 

Another  Massachusetts  poet,  who  was  outside  the 
'Boston  coterie,  like  Bryant,  and,  like  him,  tried  his 
hand  at  journalism,  was  John  Greenleaf  Whittier 
(1807-  ).  He  was  born  in  a  solitary  farmhouse  near 
Haverhill,  in  the  valley  of  the  Merrimack,  and  his 
life  has  been  passed  mostly  at  his  native  place  and 
at  the  neighboring  town  of  Amesbury.  The  local 
color,  which  is  very  pronounced  in  his  poetry,  is 
that  of  the  Merrimack  from  the  vicinity  of  Haver- 
hill  to  its  mouth  at  Newburyport,  a  region  of  hill 
side  farms,  opening  out  below  into  wide  marshes — 
"the  low,  green  prairies  of  the  sea,"  and  the  beaches 
of  Hampton  and  Salisbury.  The  scenery  of  the 
Merrimack  is  familiar  to  all  readers  of  Whittier: 
the  cotton-spinning  towns  along  its  banks,  with 
their  factories  and  dams,  the  sloping  pastures  and 
orchards  of  the  back  country,  the  sands  of  Plum 
Island  and  the  level  reaches  of  water  meadow  be 
tween  which  glide  the  broad-sailed  "  gundalows  " — 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  205 

a  local  corruption  of  gondola — laden  with  hay. 
Whittier  was  a  farmer  lad,  and  had  only  such  educa 
tion  as  the  district  school  could  supply,  supplement 
ed  by  two  years  at  the  Haverhill  Academy.  In  his 
School  Days  he  gives  a  picture  of  the  little  old  country 
school-house  as  it  used  to  be,  the  only  alma  mater 
of  so  many  distinguished  Americans,  and  to  which 
many  others  who  have  afterward  trodden  the  pave 
ments  of  great  universities  look  back  so  fondly 
as  to  their  first  wicket  gate  into  the  land  of 
knowledge. 

"  Still  sits  the  school-house  by  the  road, 

A  ragged  *beggar  sunning  ; 
Around  it  still  the  sumachs  grow 

And  blackberry  vines  are  running. 

"  Within,  the  master's  desk  is  seen, 

Deep-scarred  by  raps  official; 
The  warping  floor,  the  battered  seats, 

The  jack-knife's  carved  initial." 

A  copy  of  Burns  awoke  the  slumbering  instinct 
in  the  young  poet,  and  he  began  to  contribute 
verses  to  Garrison's  Free  Press,  published  at  New- 
buryport,  and  to  the  Haverhill  Gazette.  Then  he 
went  to  Boston,  and  became  editor  for  a  short 
time  of  the  Manufacturer.  Next  he  edited  the 
Essex  Gazette,  at  Haverhill,  and  in  1830  he  took 
charge  of  George  D.  Prentice's  paper,  the  New 
England  Weekly  Review,  at  Hartford,  Conn.  Here 
he  fell  in  with  a  young  Connecticut  poet  of  much 
promise,  J.  G.  C.  Brainard,  editor  of  the  Connecti- 


206  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

cut  Mirror,  whose  "  Remains  "  Whittier  edited  in 
1832.  At  Hartford,  too,  he  published  his  first 
book,  a  volume  of  prose  and  verse,  entitled  Leg 
ends  of  New  England,  1831,  which  is  not  otherwise 
remarkable  than  as  showing  his  early  interest  in 
Indian  colonial  traditions — especially  those  which 
had  a  touch  of  the  supernatural — a  mine  which  he 
afterward  worked  to  good  purpose  in  the  Bridal 
of  Pennacook,  the  Witch's  Daughter,  and  similar 
poems.  Some  of  the  Legends  testify  to  Brainard's 
influence  and  to  the  influence  of  Whittier's  tem 
porary  residence  at  Hartford.  One  of  the  prose 
pieces,  for  example,  deals  with  the  famous  "  Moo- 
dus  Noises  "  at  Haddam,  on  the  Connecticut  River, 
and  one  of  the  poems  is  the  same  in  subject  with 
Brainard's  Black  Fox  of  Salmon  River.  After  a 
year  and  a  half  at  Hartford,  Whittier  returned  to 
Haverhill  and  to  farming. 

The  antislavery  agitation  was  now  beginning, 
and  into  this  he  threw  himself  with  all  the  ardor 
of  his  nature.  He  became  the  poet  of  the  reform 
as  Garrison  was  its  apostle,  and  Sumner  and 
Phillips  its  speakers.  In  1833  he  published  Justice 
and  Expediency,  a  prose  tract  against  slavery,  and 
in  the  same  year  he  took  part  in  the  formation  of 
the  American  Antislavery  Society  at  Philadelphia, 
sitting  in  the  convention  as  a  delegate  of  the 
Boston  Abolitionists.  Whittier  was  a  Quaker,  and 
that  denomination,  influenced  by  the  preaching  of 
John  Woolman  and  others,  had  long  since  quietly 
abolished  slavery  within  its  own  communion.  The 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  207 

Quakers  of  Philadelphia  and  elsewhere  took  an 
earnest  though  peaceful  part  in  the  Garrisonian 
movement.  But  it  was  a  strange  irony  of  fate  that 
had  made  the  fiery-hearted  Whittier  a  Friend.  His 
poems  against  slavery  and  disunion  have  the  mar 
tial  ring  of  a  Tyrtaeus  or  a  Korner,  added  to  the 
stern  religious  zeal  of  Cromwell's  Ironsides.  They 
are  like  the  sound  of  the  trumpet  blown  before  the 
walls  of  Jericho,  or  the  Psalms  of  David  denounc 
ing  woe  upon  the  enemies  of  God's  chosen  people. 
If  there  is  any  purely  Puritan  strain  in  American 
poetry  it  is  in  the  war-hymns  of  the  Quaker  "  Her 
mit  of  Amesbury."  Of  these  patriotic  poems  there 
were  three  principal  collections :  Voices  of  Freedom, 
1849  ;  the  Panorama  and  Other  Poems,  1856  ;  and 
In  War  Time,  1863  ;  Whittier's  work  as  the  poet  of 
freedom  was  done  when,  on  hearing  the  bells  ring 
for  the  passage  of  the  constitutional  amendment 
abolishing  slavery,  he  wrote  his  splendid  Laus  Deo, 
thrilling  with  the  ancient  Hebrew  spirit : 

"  Loud  and  long 
Lift  the  old  exulting  song, 

Sing  with  Miriam  by  the  sea — 
He  has  cast  the  mighty  down, 

Horse  and  rider  sink  and  drown,        ' 

He  hath  triumphed  gloriously.  " 

Of  his  poems  distinctly  relating  to  the  events  of 
the  civil  war,  the  best,  or  at  all  events  the  most 
popular,  is  Barbara  Frietchie.  Ichabod,  expressing 
the  indignation  of  the  Free  Soilers  at  Daniel  Web 
ster's  seventh  of  March  speech  in  defense  of  the 


208  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Fugitive  Slave  Law,  is  one  of  Whittier's  best  polit 
ical  poems,  and  not  altogether  unworthy  of  com 
parison  with  Browning's  Lost  Leader.  The  lan 
guage  of  Whittier's  warlike  lyrics  is  biblical, 
and  many  of  his  purely  devotional  pieces  are  re 
ligious  poetry  of  a  high  order  and  have  been  in 
cluded  in  numerous  collections  of  hymns.  Of  his 
songs  of  faith  and  doubt,  the  best  are  perhaps  Our 
'Master,  Chapel  of  the  Hermits,  and  Eternal  Good 
ness  j  one  stanza  from  the  last  of  which  is  familiar  : 

"I  know  not  where  His  islands  lift 

Their  fronded  palms  in  air, 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 

Beyond  His  love  and  care." 

But  from  politics  and  war  Whittier  turned  gladly 
to  sing  the  homely  life  of  the  New  England  coun 
try  side.  His  rural  ballads  and  idyls  are  as  genu 
inely  American  as  any  thing  that  our  poets  have 
written,  and  have  been  recommended,  as  such,  to 
English  working-men  by  Whittier's  co-religionist, 
John  Bright.  The  most  popular  of  these  is  prob 
ably  Maud  Muller,  whose  closing  couplet  has 
passed  into  proverb.  Skipper  Iresons  Ride  is  also 
very  current.  Better  than  either  of  them,  as 
poetry,  fs  Telling  the  Bees.  But  Whittier's  master 
piece  in  work  of  a  descriptive  and  reminiscent 
kind  is  Snow  Bound,  1866,  a  New  England  fire 
side  idyl  which  in  its  truthfulness  recalls  the 
Winter  Evening  of  Cowper's  Task  and  Burns's 
Cotter  s  Saturday  Night,  but  in  sweetness  and  ani 
mation  is  superior  to  either  of  them.  Although  in 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  209 

some  things  a  Puritan  of  the  Puritans,  Whittier 
has  never  forgotten  that  he  is  also  a  Friend,  and 
several  of  his  ballads  and  songs  have  been  upon 
the  subject  of  the  early  Quaker  persecutions  in 
Massachusetts.  The  most  impressive  of  these  is 
Cassandra  Southwick.  The  latest  of  them,  the 
King's  Missive,  originally  contributed  to  the 
Memorial  History  of  Boston  in  1880,  and  reprinted 
the  next  year  in  a  volume  with  other  poems,  has 
been  the  occasion  of  a  rather  lively  controversy. 
The  Bridal  of  Pennacook,  1848,  and  the  Tent  on 
the  J3each,  1867,  which  contain  some  of  his  best 
work,  were  series  of  ballads  told  by  different  nar 
rators,  after  the  fashion  of  Longfellow's  Tales  of 
a  Wayside  Inn.  As  an  artist  in  verse  Whittier  is 
strong  and  fervid,  rather  than  delicate  or  rich. 
He  uses  only  a  few  metrical  forms — by  preference 
the  eight-syllabled  rhyming  couplet 

— "  Maud  Mailer  on  a  summer's  day 

Raked  the  meadow  sweet  with  hay,"  etc. — 

and  the  emphatic  tramp  of  this  measure  becomes 
very  monotonous,  as  do  some  of  Whittier's  man 
nerisms  ;  which  proceed,  however,  never  from  af 
fectation,  but  from  a  lack  of  study  and  variety, 
and  so,  no  doubt,  in  part  from  the  want  of  that 
academic  culture  and  thorough  technical  equip 
ment  which  Lowell  and  Longfellow  enjoyed. 
Though  his  poems  are  not  in  dialect,  like  Lowell's 
Biglow  Papers,  he  knows  how  to  make  an  artistic 
use  of  homely  provincial  words,  such  as  "  chore," 
14 


210  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

which  give  his  idyls  of  the  hearth  and  the  barn 
yard  a  genuine  Doric  cast.  Whittier's  prose  is 
inferior  to  his  verse.  The  fluency  which  was  a 
besetting  sin  of  his  poetry  when  released  from  the 
fetters  of  rhyme  and  meter  ran  into  wordiness 
His  prose  writings  were  partly  contributions  to  the 
slavery  controversy,  partly  biographical  sketches 
of  English  and  American  reformers,  and  partly 
studies  of  the  scenery  and  folk-lore  of  the  Mer- 
rimack  Valley.  Those  of  most  literary  interest 
were  the  Supernaturalism  of  New  England,  1847, 
and  some  of  the  papers  in  Literary  Recreations  and 
Miscellanies,  1854. 

While  Massachusetts  was  Creating  an  American 
literature,  other  sections  of  the  Union  were  by  no 
means  idle.  The  West,  indeed,  was  as  yet  too  ra\v 
to  add  any  thing  of  importance  to  the  artistic  prod 
uct  of  the  country.  The  South  was  hampered 
by  circumstances  which  will  presently  be  described. 
But  in  and  about  the  seaboard  cities  of  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  Baltimore  and  Richmond,  many  pens 
were  busy  filling  the  columns  of  literary  weeklies 
and  monthlies;  and  there  was  a  considerable  out 
put,  such  as  it  was,  of  books  of  poetry,  fiction, 
travel,  and  miscellaneous  light  literature.  Time 
has  already  relegated  most  of  these  to  the  dusty  top- 
shelves.  To  rehearse  the  names  of  the  numerous 
contributors  to  the  old  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  to 
Godeys,  and  Graham's,  and  the  New  Mirror,  and  the 
Southern  Literary  Messenger,  or  to  run  over  the  list 
of  authorlings  and  poetasters  in  Foe's  papers  on 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  211 

the  Literati  of  New  York,  would  be  very  much 
like  reading  the  inscriptions  on  the  head-stones  of 
an  old  grave-yard.  In  the  columns  of  these  pre 
historic  magazines  and  in  the  book  notices  and 
reviews  away  back  in  the  thirties  and  forties,  one 
encounters  the  handiwork  and  the  names  of  Emer 
son,  Holmes,  Longfellow,  Hawthorne,  and  Lowell, 
embodied  in  this  mass  of  forgotten  literature.  It 
would  have  required  a  good  deal  of  critical  acu 
men,  at  the  time,  to  predict  that  these  and  a  few 
others  would  soon  be  thrown  out  into" bold  relief, 
as  the  significant  and  permanent  names  in  the  lit 
erature  of  their  generation,  while  Paulding,  Hirst, 
Fay,  Dawes,  Mrs.  Osgood,  and  scores  of  others 
who  figured  beside  them  in  the  fashionable  peri 
odicals,  and  filled  quite  as  large  a  space  in  the  pub 
lic  eye,  would  sink  into  oblivion  in  less  than  thirty 
years.  Some  of  these  latter  were  clever  enough 
people  ;  they  entertained  their  contemporary  pub 
lic  sufficiently,  but  their  work  had  no  vitality 
or  "power  of  continuance."  The  great  majority 
of  the  writings  of  any  period  are  necessarily 
ephemeral,  and  time  by  a  slow  process  of  natural 
selection  is  constantly  sifting  out  the  few  repre 
sentative  books  which  shall  carry  on  the  memory 
of  the  period  to  posterity.  Now  and  then  it  may 
be  predicted  of  some  undoubted  work  of  genius, 
even  at  the  moment  that  it  sees  the  light,  that  it 
is  destined  to  endure.  But  tastes  and  fashions 
change,  and  few  things  are  better  calculated  to  in 
spire  the  literary  critic  with  humility  than  to  read 


212  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  prophecies  in  old  reviews  and  see  how  the 
future,  now  become  the  present,  has  quietly  given 
them  the  lie. 

From  among  the  professional  litterateurs  of  his 
day  emerges,  with  ever  sharper  distinctness  as 
time  goes  on,  the  name  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  (1809- 
1849.)  By  the  irony  of  fate  Poe  was  born  at 
Boston,  and  his  first  volume,  Tamerlane  and  Other 
Poems,  1827,  was  printed  in  that  city  and  bore 
upon  its  title  page  the  words,  *'  By  a  Bostonian." 
But  his  parentage,  so  far  as  it  was  any  thing,  was 
southern.  His  father  was  a  Marvlander  who  had 
gone  upon  the  stage  and  married  an  actress,  her 
self  the  daughter  of  an  actress  and  a  native  of  En 
gland.  Left  an  orphan  by  the  early  death  of  both 
parents,  Poe  was  adopted  by  a  Mr.  Allan,  a  wealthy 
merchant  of  Richmond,  Va.  He  was  educated 
partly  at  an  English  school,  was  student  for  a  time 
in  the  University  of  Virginia  and  afterward  a 'cadet 
in  the  Military  Academy  at  West  Point.  His  youth 
was  wild  and  irregular  :  he  gambled  and  drank, 
was  proud,  bitter  and  perverse  ;  finally  quarreled 
with  his  guardian  and  adopted  father — by  whom 
he  was  disowned — and  then  betook  himself  to  the 
life  of  a  literary  hack.  His  brilliant  but  under 
paid  work  for  various  periodicals  soon  brought 
him  into  notice,  and  he  was  given  the  editorship  of 
the  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  published  at  Rich 
mond,  and  subsequently  of  the  Gentlemen's — after 
ward  Grahams — Magazine  in  Philadelphia.  These 
and  all  other  positions  Poe  forfeited  through  his 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  213 

dissipated  habits  and  wayward  temper,  and  finally, 
in  1844,  he  drifted  to  New  York,  where  he  found 
employment  on  the  Evening  Mirror  and  then  on 
the  Broadivay  Journal.  He  died  of  delirium  tre- 
mens  at  the  Marine  Hospital  in  Baltimore.  His 
life  was  one  of  the  most  wretched  in  literary  his 
tory.  He  was  an  extreme  instance  of  what  used  to 
be  called  the  u  eccentricity  of  genius."  He  had 
the  irritable  vanity  which  is  popularly  supposed 
to  accompany  the  poetic  temperament,  and  was  so 
insanely  egotistic  as  to  imagine  that  Longfellow 
and  others  were  constantly  plagiarizing  from  him. 
The  best  side  of  Poe's  character  came  out  in  his 
domestic  relations,  in  which  he  displayed  great 
tenderness,  patience  and  fidelity.  His  instincts 
were  gentlemanly,  and  his  manner  and  conversa 
tion  were  often  winning.  In  the  place  of  moral 
feeling  he  had  the  artistic  conscience.  In  his 
critical  papers,  except  where  warped  by  passion  or 
prejudice,  he  showed  neither  fear  nor  favor,  de 
nouncing  bad  work  by  the  most  illustrious  hands 
and  commending  obscure  merit.  The  "  impudent 
literary  cliques"  who  puffed  each  other's  books; 
the  feeble  chirrupings  of  the  bardlings  who  manu 
factured  verses  for  the  "  Annuals  ;  "  and  the  twad 
dle  of  the  "  genial  "  incapables  who  praised  them 
in  flabby  reviews — all  these  Poe  exposed  with 
ferocious  honesty.  Nor,  though  his  writings  are 
amoral,  can  they  be  called  in  any  sense  wwmornl. 
His  poetry  is  as  pure  in  its  unearthliness  as  Bry 
ant's  in  its  austerity. 


2i4  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

I3y  1831  Poe  had  published  three  thin  books  of 
verse,  none  of  which  had  attracted  notice,  although 
the  latest  contained  the  drafts  of  a  few  of  his  most 
perfect  poems,  such  asfsra/e/,  the  Valley  of  Unrest, 
the  City  in  the  Sea,  and  one  of  the  two  pieces  in 
scribed  To  Helen.  It  was  his  habit  to  touch  and 
retouch  his  work  until  it  grew  under  his  more 
practiced  hand  into  a  shape  that  satisfied  his  fas 
tidious  taste.  Hence  the  same  poem  frequently 
reappears  in  different  stages  of  development  in 
successive  editions.  Poe  was  a  subtle  artist  in"  the 
realm  of  the  weird  and  the  fantastic.  In  his  intel 
lectual  nature  there  was  a  strange  conjunction;  an 
imagination  as  spiritual  as  Shelley's,  though,  unlike 
Shelley's,  haunted  perpetually  with  shapes  of  fear 
and  the  imagery  of  ruin;  with  this,  an  analytic 
power,  a  scientific  exactness,  and  a  mechanical  in 
genuity  more  usual  in  a  chemist  or  a  mathemati 
cian  than  in  a  poet.  He  studied  carefully  the 
mechanism  of  his  verse  and  experimented  endless 
ly  with  verbal  and  musical  effects,  such  as  repeti 
tion,  and  monotone,  and  the  selection  of  words  in 
which  the  consonants  alliterated  and  the  vowels 
varied.  In  his  Philosophy  of  Composition  he  de 
scribed  how  his  best  known  poem,  the  Raven,  was 
systematically  built  up  on  a  preconceived  plan  in 
which  the  number  of  lines  was  first  determined 
and  the  word  "nevermore"  selected  as  a  starting 
point.  No  one  who  knows  the  mood  in  which 
poetry  is  composed  will  believe  that  this  ingenious 
piece  of  dissection  really  describes  the  way  in 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  215 

which  the  Raven  was  conceived  and  written,  or 
that  any  such  deliberate  and  self-conscious  proc 
ess  could  originate  the  associations  from  which  a 
true  poem  springs.  But  it  flattered  Poe's  pride  of 
intellect  to  assert  that  his  cooler  reason  had  con 
trol  not  only  over  the  execution  of  his  poetry,  but 
over  the  very  well-head  of  thought  and  emotion. 
Some  of  his  most  successful  stories,  like  the  Gold 
Bug,  the  Mystery  of  Marie  Roget,  the  Purloined 
Letter,  and  the  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,  were 
applications  of  this  analytic  faculty  to  the  solution 
of  puzzles,  such  as  the  finding  of  buried  treasure 
or  of  a  lost  document,  or  the  ferreting  out  of  a 
mysterious  crime.  After  the  publication  of  the 
Gold  Bug  he  received  from  all  parts  of  the  country 
specimens  of  cipher  writing,  which  he  delighted  to 
work  out.  Others  of  his  tales  were  clever  pieces 
of  mystification,  like  Hans  Pfaall,  the  story  of  a 
journey  to  the  moon,  or  experiments  at  giving 
verisimilitude  to  wild  improbabilities  by  the  skillful 
introduction  of  scientific  details,  as  in  the  Facts  in 
the  Case  of  M.  Valdemar  and  Von  Kcnipelen  s  Dis 
covery.  In  his  narratives  of  this  kind  Poe  antici 
pated  the  detective  novels  of  Gaboriau  and  Wilkie 
Collins,  the  scientific  hoaxes  of  Jules  Verne,  and, 
though  in  a  less  degree,  the  artfully  worked  up 
likeness  to  fact  in  Edward  Everett  Hale's  Man 
Without  a  Country,  and  similar  fictions.  While 
Dickens's  Barnaby  Rudge  was  publishing  in  parts, 
Poe  showed  his  skill  as  a  plot  hunter  by  publishing 
a  paper  in  Graham's  Magazine  in  which  the  very 


216  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

tangled  intrigue  of  the  novel  was  correctly  raveled 
and  the  finale  predicted  in  advance. 

In  his  union  of  imagination  and  analytic  power 
Poe  resembled  Coleridge,  who,  if  any  one,  was  his 
teacher  in  poetry  and  criticism.  Poe's  verse  often 
reminds  one  of  Christabel  and  the  Ancient  Mariner, 
still  oftener  of  Kubla  Khan.  Like  Coleridge,  too, 
he  indulged  at  times  in  the  opium  habit.  But  in 
Poe  the  artist  predominated  over  every  thing  else. 
He  began  not  with  sentiment  or  thought,  but  with 
technique,  with  melody  and  color,  tricks  of  lan 
guage,  and  effects  of  verse.  It  is  curious  to 
study  the  growth  of  his  style  in  his  successive 
volumes  of  poetry.  At  first  these  are  metrical  ex 
periments  and  vague  images,  original,  and  with  a 
fascinating  suggestiveness,  but  with  so  little  mean 
ing  that  some  of  his  earlier  pieces  are  hardly  re 
moved  from  nonsense.  Gradually,  like  distant 
music  drawing  nearer  and  nearer,  his  poetry  be 
comes  fuller  of  imagination  and  of  an  inward  sig 
nificance,  without  ever  losing,  however,  its  myste 
rious  aloofness  from  the  real  world  of  the  senses. 
It  was  a  part  of  Poe's  literary  creed — formed  upon 
his  own  practice  and  his  own  limitations,  but  set 
forth  with  a  great  display  of  a  priori  reasoning  in 
his  essay  on  the  Poetic  Principle  and  elsewhere — 
that  pleasure  and  not  instruction  or  moral  exhor 
tation  was  the  end  of  poetry;  that  beauty  and  not 
truth  or  goodness  was  its  means;  and,  furthermore, 
that  the  pleasure  which  it  gave  should  be  indefinite. 
About  his  own  poetry  there  was  always  this  in- 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  217 

definiteness.  His  imagination  dwelt  in  a  strange 
country  of  dream  —  a  "ghoul-haunted  region  of 
Weir,"  "out  of  space,  out  of  time" — filled  with 
unsubstantial  landscapes,  and  peopled  by  spectral 
shapes.  And  yet  there  is  a  wonderful,  hidden 
significance  in  this  uncanny  scenery.  The  reader 
feels  that  the  wild,  fantasmal  imagery  is  in  itself  a 
kind  of  language,  and  that  it  in  some  way  expresses 
a  brooding  thought  or  passion,  the  terror  and  de 
spair  of  a  lost  soul.  Sometimes  there  is  an  ob 
vious  allegory,  as  in  the  Haunted  Palace,  which  is 
the  parable  of  a  ruined  mind,  or  in  the  Raven,  the 
most  popular  of  all  Poe's  poems,  originally  pub 
lished  in  the  American  Whig  Review  for  February, 
1845.  Sometimes  the  meaning  is  more  obscure, 
as  in  Ulalume^  which,  to  most  people,  is  quite  in 
comprehensible,  and  yet  to  all  readers  of  poetic 
feeling  is  among  the  most  characteristic,  and, 
therefore,  the  most  fascinating,  of  its  author's 
creations. 

Now  and  then,  as  in  the  beautiful  ballad,  Anna 
bel  Lee,  and  To  One  in  Paradise,  the  poet  emerges 
into  the  light  of  common  human  feeling  and 
speaks  a  more  intelligible  language.  But  in  gen 
eral  his  poetry  is  not  the  poetry  of  the  heart,  and 
its  passion  is  not  the  passion  of  flesh  and  blood. 
In  Poe  the  thought  of  death  is  always  near, 
and  of  the  shadowy  borderland  between  death 
and  life. 

"The  play  is  the  tragedy  'Man,' 
And  its  hero  the  Conqueror  Worm," 


2i8  AMERICAN   LITERATURE. 

The  prose  tale,  Ligeia,  in  which  these  verses 
are  inserted,  is  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  all 
Poe's  writings,  and  its  theme  is  the  power  of 
the  will  to  overcome  death.  In  that  singu 
larly  impressive  poem,  the  Sleeper,  the  morbid 
horror  which  invests  the  tomb  springs  from  the 
same  source,  the  materiality  of  Poe's  imagina 
tion,  which  refuses  to  let  the  soul  go  free  from 
the  body. 

This  quality  explains  why  Poe's  Tales  of  the 
Grotesque  and  Arabesque,  1840,  are  on  a  lower 
plane  than  Hawthorne's  romances,  to  which  a  few 
of  them,  like  William  Wilson  and  the  Man  of  the 
Crowd,  have  some  resemblance.  The  former  of 
these,  in  particular,  is  in  Hawthorne's  peculiar 
province,  the  allegory  of  the  conscience.  But  in 
general  the  tragedy  in  Hawthorne  is  a  spiritual 
one,  while  Poe  calls  in  the  aid  of  material  forces. 
The  passion  of  physical  fear  or  of  superstitious 
horror  is  that  which  his  writings  most  frequently 
excite.  These  tales  represent  various  grades  of 
the  frightful  and  the  ghastly,  from  the  mere  bug-a- 
boo  story  like  the  Black  Cat,  which  makes  children 
afraid  to  go  in  the  dark,  up  to  the  breathless  ter 
ror  of  the  Cask  of  Amontillado,  or  the  Red  Death. 
Poe's  masterpiece  in  this  kind  is  the  fateful  tale  of 
the  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  with  its  solemn 
and  magnificent  close.  His  prose,  at  its  best, 
often  recalls,  in  its  richly  imaginative  cast,  the 
manner  of  De  Quincey  in  such  passages  as  his 
Dream  Fugue,  or  Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow.  In  de- 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  219 

scriptive  pieces  like  the  Domain  of  Arnheim,  and 
stories  of  adventure  like  the  Descent  into  tJie  Mael 
strom,  and  his  long  sea  tale,  The  Narrative  of  Ar 
thur  Gordon  Pym,  1838,  he  displayed  a  realistic  in 
ventiveness  almost  equal  to  Swift's  or  De  Foe's. 
He  was  not  without  a  mocking  irony,  but  he  had 
no  constructive  humor,  and  his  attempts  at  the 
facetious  were  mostly  failures. 

Poe's  magical  creations  were  rootless  flowers. 
He  took  no  hold  upon  the  life  about  him,  and 
cared  nothing  for  the  public  concerns  of  his  coun 
try.  His  poems  and  tales  might  have  been  writ 
ten  in  vacua  for  any  thing  American  in  them. 
Perhaps  for  this  reason,  in  part,  his  fame  has  been 
so  cosmopolitan.  In  France  especially  his  writings 
have  been  favorites.  Charles  Baudelaire,  the  au 
thor  of  the  Fleurs  du  Mai,  translated  them  into 
French,  and  his  own  impressive  but  unhealthy 
poetry  shows  evidence  of  Poe's  influence.  The 
defect  in  Poe  was  in  character,  a  defect  which 
will  make  itself  felt  in  art  as  in  life.  If  he  had 
had  the  sweet  home  feeling  of  Longfellow  or  the 
moral  fervor  of  Whittier  he  might  have  been  a 
greater  poet  than  either. 

"  If  I  could  dwell 
Where  Israfel 

Hath  dwelt,  and  he  where  I, 
He  might  not  sing  so  wildly  well 

A  mortal  melody, 
While  a  bolder  note  than  this  might  swell 

From  my  lyre  within  the  sky  !  " 


220  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

Though  Poe  was  a  southerner,  if  not  by  birth,  at 
least  by  race  and  breeding,  there  was  nothing  dis 
tinctly  southern  about  his  peculiar  genius,  and  in 
his  wandering  life  he  was  associated  as  much  with 
Philadelphia  and  New  York  as  with  Baltimore  and 
Richmond.  The  conditions  which  had  made  the 
southern  colonies  unfruitful  in  literary  and  educa 
tional  works  before  the  Revolution  continued  to 
act  down  to  the  time  of  the  civil  war.  Eli  Whit 
ney's  invention  of  the  cotton  gin  in  the  closing 
years  of  the  last  century  gave  extension  to  slavery, 
making  it  profitable  to  cultivate  the  new  staple  by 
enormous  gangs  of  field  hands  working  under  the 
whip  of  the  overseer  in  large  plantations.  Slavery 
became  henceforth  a  business  speculation  in  the 
States  furthest  south,  and  not,  as  in  Old  Virginia 
and  Kentucky,  a  comparatively  mild  domestic  sys 
tem.  The  necessity  of  defending  its  peculiar  in 
stitution  against  the  attacks  of  a  growing  faction 
in  the  North  compelled  the  South  to  throw  all  its 
intellectual  strength  into  politics,  which,  for  that 
matter,  is  the  natural  occupation  and  excitement 
of  a  social  aristocracy.  Meanwhile  immigration 
sought  the  free  States,  and  there  was  no  middle 
class  at  the  South.  The  u  poor  whites"  were  ig 
norant  and  degraded.  There  were  people  of  edu 
cation  in  the  cities  and  on  some  of  the  plantations, 
but  there  was  no  great  educated  class  from  which 
a  literature  could  proceed.  And  the  culture  of 
the  South,  such  as  it  was,  was  becoming  old- 
fashioned  and  local,  as  the  section  was  isolated 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  221 

more  and  more  from  the  rest  of  the  Union  and 
from  the  enlightened  public  opinion  of  Europe  by 
its  reactionary  prejudices  and  its  sensitiveness  on 
the  subject  of  slavery.  Nothing  can  be  imagined 
more  ridiculously  provincial  than  the  sophomorical 
editorials  in  the  southern  press  just  before  the  out 
break  of  the  war,  or  than  the  backward  and  ill- 
informed  articles  which  passed  for  reviews  in  the 
poorly  supported  periodicals  of  the  South. 

In  the  general  dearth  of  work  of  high  and  per 
manent  value,  one  or  two  southern  authors  may 
be  mentioned  whose  writings  have  at  least  done 
something  to  illustrate  the  life  and  scenery  of  their 
section.  When  in  1833  the  Baltimore  Saturday 
Visiter  offered  a  prize  of  a  hundred  dollars  for  the 
best  prose  tale,  one  of  the  committee  who  awarded 
the  prize  to  Poe's  first  story,  the  MS.  Found  in  a 
Bottle,  was  John  P.  Kennedy,  a  Whig  gentleman  of 
Baltimore,  who  afterward  became  Secretary  of 
the  Navy  in  Fillmore's  administration.  The  year 
before  he  had  published  Swallow  Barn,  a  series 
of  agreeable  sketches  of  country  life  in  Virginia. 
In  1835  and  1838  he  published  his  two  novels, 
Horse- Shoe  Robinson  and  Rob  of  the  Bowl,  the 
former  a  story  of  the  Revolutionary  Wrar  in  South 
Carolina  ;  the  latter  an  historical  tale  of  colonial 
Maryland.  These  rfad  sufficient  success  to  war 
rant  reprinting  as  late  as  1852.  But  the  most 
popular  and  voluminous  of  all  Southern  writers  of 
fiction  was  William  Gilmore  Simms,  a  South  Car 
olinian,  who  died  in  1870.  He  wrote  over  thirty 


222  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

novels,  mostly  romances  of  Revolutionary  history, 
southern  life  and  wild  adventure,  among  the  best 
of  which  were  the  Partisan,  1835,  and  the  Yemas- 
see.  Simms  was  an  inferior  Cooper,  with  a  differ 
ence.  His  novels  are  good  boys'  books,  but  are 
crude  and  hasty  in  composition.  He  was  strongly 
southern  in  his  sympathies,  though  his  newspaper, 
the  Charleston  City  Gazette,  took  part  against  the 
Nullifiers.  His  miscellaneous  writings  include 
several  histories  and  biographies,  political  tracts, 
addresses  and  critical  papers  contributed  to  south 
ern  magazines.  He  also  wrote  numerous  poems, 
the  most  ambitious  of  which  \\^  Atlantis,  a  Story  of 
the  Sea,  1832.  His  poems  have  little  value  except 
as  here  and  there  illustrating  local  scenery  and 
manners,  as  in  Southern  Passages  and  Pictures, 
1839.  Mr.  John  Esten  Cooke's  pleasant  but  not 
very  strong  Virginia  Comedians  was,  perhaps,  in 
literary  quality  the  best  southern  novel  produced 
before  the  civil  war. 

When  Poe  came  to  New  York,  the  most  con 
spicuous  literary  figure  of  the  metropolis,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  Bryant  and  Halleck,  was 
N.  P.  Willis,  one  of  the  editors  of  the  Evening 
Mirror,  upon  which  journal  Poe  was  for  a  time 
engaged.  Willis  had  made  a  literary  reputation, 
when  a  student  at  Yale,  by*  his  Scripture  Poems, 
written  in  smooth  blank  verse.  Afterward  he  had 
edited  the  American  Monthly  in  his  native  city  of 
Boston,  and  more  recently  he  had  published  Pen- 
dllings  by  the  Way,  1835,  a  pleasant  record  of  Eu- 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  223 

ropean  saunterings  ;  Inklings  of  Adventure,  1836, 
a  collection  of  dashing  stories 'and  sketches  of 
American  and  foreign  life  ;  and  Letters  from  Un 
der  a  Bridge,  1839,  a  series  of  charming  rural  let 
ters  from  his  country  place  at  O \vego,  on  the  Sus- 
quehanna.  Willis's  work,  always  graceful  and 
sparkling,  sometimes  even  brilliant,  though  light 
in  substance  and  jaunty  in  style,  bad  quickly 
raised  him  to  the  summit  of  popularity.  During 
the  years  from  1835  to  1850  he  was  the  most  suc 
cessful  American  raagazinist,  and  even  down  to 
the  day  of  his  death,  in  1867,  he  retained  his  hold 
upon  the  attention  of  the  fashionable  public  by 
his  easy  paragraphing  and  correspondence  in  the 
Mirror  and  its  successor,  the  Home  Journal,  which 
catered  to  the  literary  wants  of  the  beau  monde. 
Much  of  Willis's  work  was  ephemeral,  though 
clever  of  its  kind,  but  a  few  of  his  best  tales  and 
sketches,  such  as  F.  Smith,  The  Ghost  Ball  at  Con 
gress  Hall,  Edith  Linsey,  and  the  Lunatic's  Skate, 
together  with  some  of  the  Letters  from  Under  a 
Bridge,  are  worthy  of  preservation,  not  only  as  read 
able  stories,  but  as  society  studies  of  life  at  Amer 
ican  watering  places  like  Nahant  and  Saratoga 
and  Ballston  Spa  half  a  century  ago.  A  number  of 
his  simpler  poems,  like  Unseen  Spirits,  Spring,  To 
M — from  Abroad,  and  Lines  on  Leaving  Europe, 
still  retain  a  deserved  place  in  collections  and 
anthologies. 

The    senior  editor   of  the   Mirror,    George    P. 
Morn's,  was  once  a  very  popular  song  writer,  and 


224  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

his  lVoodmant  Spare  tJiat  Tree,  still  survives. 
Other  residents  of  New  York  City  who  have  writ 
ten  single  famous  pieces  were  Clement  C.  Moore, 
a  professor  in  the  General  Theological  Semina 
ry,  whose  Visit  from  St.  Nicholas — *'  Twas  the 
Night  Before  Christmas,"  etc. — is  a  favorite  ballad 
in  every  nursery  in  the  land  ;  Charles  Fenno 
Hoffman,  a  novelist  of  reputation  in  his  time,  but 
now  remembered  only  as  the  author  of  the  song, 
Sparkling  and  Bright,  and  the  patriotic  ballad  of 
Monterey ;  Robert  H.  Messinger,  a  native  of  Bos 
ton,  but  long  resident  in  New  York,  where  he  was 
a  familiar  figure  in  fashionable  society,  who  wrote 
Give  Me  tJie  Old,  a  fine  ode  with  a  choice  Horatian 
flavor  ;  and  William  Allen  Buller,  a  lawyer  and 
occasional  writer,  whose  capital  satire  of  Nothing 
to  Wear  was  published  anonymously  and  had  a 
great  run.  Of  younger  poets,  like  Stoddard  and  Al- 
drich,  who  formerly  wrote  for  the  Mirror  and  who 
are  still  living  and  working  in  the  maturity  of  their 
powers,  it  is  not  within  the  limits  and  design  of 
this  sketch  to  speak.  But  one  of  their  contem 
poraries,  Bayard  Taylor,  who  died,  American  Min 
ister  at  Berlin,  in  1878,  though  a  Pennsylvanian  by 
birth  and  rearing,  may  be  reckoned  among  the 
"  literati  of  New  York."  A  farmer  lad  from  Ches 
ter  County,  who  had  learned  the  printer's  trade 
and  printed  a  little  volume  of  his  juvenile  verses 
in  1844,  he  came  to  New  York  shortly  after 
with  credentials  from  Dr.  Griswold,  the  editor  of 
Graham  s,  and  obtaining  encouragement  and  aid 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  225 

from  Willis,  Horace  Greeley  and  others,  he  set 
out  to  make  the  tour  of  Europe,  walking  from 
town  to  town  in  Germany  and  getting  employment 
now  and  then  at  his  trade  to  help  pay  the  ex 
penses  of  the  trip.  The  story  of  these  Wander- 
jahre  he  told  in  his  Views  Afoot,  1846.  This  was 
the  first  of  eleven  books  of  travel  written  during 
the  course  of  his  life.  He  was  an  inveterate 
nomad,  and  his  journeyings  carried  him  to  the  re 
motest  regions — to  California,  India,  China,  Japan 
and  the  isles  of  the  sea,  to  Central  Africa  and  the 
Soudan,  Palestine,  Egypt,  Iceland  and  the  "  by 
ways  of  Europe."  His  head-quarters  at  home  were 
in  New  York,  where  he  did  literary  work  for  theJV/- 
bune.  He  was  a  rapid  and  incessant  worker,  throw 
ing  off  many  volumes  of  verse  and  prose,  fiction,  es 
says,  sketches,  translations  and  criticism,  mainly 
contributed  in  the  first  instance  to  the  magazines. 
His  versatility  was  very  marked,  and  his  poetry 
ranged  from  Rhymes  of  Travel,  1848,  and  Poems 
of  the  Orient,  1854,  to  idyls  and  home  ballads  of 
Pennsylvania  life,  like  the  Quaker  Widow  and  the 
Old  Pennsylvania  Farmer,  and,  on  the  other  side, 
to  ambitious  and  somewhat  mystical  poems,  like 
the  Masque  of  the  Gods,  1872 — written  in  four 
days — and  dramatic  experiments  like  the  Prophet, 
1874,  and  Prince  Deukalion,  1878.  He  was  a  man 
of  buoyant  and  eager  nature,  with  a  great  appe 
tite  for  new  experience,  a  remarkable  memory,  a 
talent  for  learning  languages,  and  a  too  great  readi 
ness  to  take  the  hue  of  his  favorite  books.  From 
15 


226  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

his  facility,  his  openness  to  external  impressions 
of  scenery  and  costume  and  his  habit  of  turning 
these  at  once  into  the  service  of  his  pen,  it  results 
that  there  is  something  "  newspapery  "  and  super 
ficial  about  most  of  his  prose.  It  is  reporter's 
work,  though  reporting  of  a  high  order.  His 
poetry,  too,  though  full  of  glow  and  picturesque- 
ness,  is  largely  imitative,  suggesting  Tennyson  not 
unfrequently,  but  more  often  Shelley.  His  spirited 
Bedouin  Song,  for  example,  has  an  echo  of  Shelley's 
Lines  to  an  Indian  Air : 

"  From  the  desert  I  come  to  thee 

On  a  stallion  shod  with  fire  ; 
And  the  winds  are  left  behind 

In  the  speed  of  my  desire. 
Under  thy  window  I  stand 

And  the  midnight  hears  my  cry ; 
I  love  thee,  I  love  but  thee 

With  a  love  that  shall  not  die." 

The  dangerous  quickness  with  which  he  caught 
the  manner  of  other  poets  made  him  an  admirable 
parodist  and  translator.  His  Echo  Club,  1876,  con 
tains  some  of  the  best  travesties  in  the  tongue, 
and  his  great  translation  of  Goethe's  Faust, 
1870-71 — with  its  wonderfully  close  reproduction 
of  the  original  meters — is  one  of  the  glories  of 
American  literature.  All  in  all,  Taylor  may  un 
hesitatingly  be  put  first  among  our  poets  .of  the 
second  generation — the  generation  succeeding  that 
of  Longfellow  and  Lowell — although  tlie  lack  in 
him  of  original  genius  self-determined  to  a  pe- 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  227 

culiar  sphere,  or  the  want  of  an  inward  fixity  and 
concentration  to  resist  the  rich  tumult  of  outward 
impressions,  has  made  him  less  significant  in  the 
history  of  our  literary  thought  than  some  other 
writers  less  generously  endowed. 

Taylor's  novels  had  the  qualities  of  his  verse. 
They  were  profuse,  eloquent  and  faulty.  John 
Godfreys  Fortune,  1864,  gave  a  picture  of  bo- 
hemian  life  in  New  York.  Hannah  Thurston,  1863, 
and  the  Story  of  Kennett,  1866,  introduced  many 
incidents  and  persons  from  the  old  Quaker  life  of 
rural  Pennsylvania,  as  Taylor  remembered  it  in 
his  boyhood.  The  former  was  like  Hawthorne's 
Blithedale  Romance,  a  satire  on  fanatics  and  re 
formers,  and  its  heroine  is  a  nobly  conceived  char 
acter,  though  drawn  with  some  exaggeration.  The 
Story  of  Kennett,  which  is  largely  autobiographic^ 
has  a  greater  freshness  and  reality  than  the  others 
and  is  full  of  personal  recollections.  In  these 
novels,  as  in  his  short  stories,  Taylor's  pictorial 
skill  is  greater  on  the  whole  than  his  power  of  cre 
ating  characters  or  inventing  plots. 

Literature  in  the  West  now  began  to  have  an 
existence.  Another  young  poet  from  Chester 
County,  Pa.,  namely,  Thomas  Buchanan  Read, 
went  to  Cincinnati,  and  not  to  New  York,  to  study 
sculpture  and  painting,  about  1837,  and  one  of  his 
best-known  poems,  Pans  Maximus,  was  written  on 
the  occasion  of  the  opening  of  the  suspension 
bridge  across  the  Ohio.  Read  came  East,  to  be 
sure,  in  1841,  and  spent  many  years  in  our  sea- 


228  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

board  cities  and  in  Italy.  He  was  distinctly  a 
minor  poet,  but  some  of  his  Pennsylvania  pastor 
als,  like  the  Deserted  Road,  have  a  natural  sweet 
ness;  and  his  luxurious  Drifting,  which  combines 
the  methods  of  painting  and  poetry,  is  justly  popu 
lar.  Sheridan's  Ride — perhaps  his  most  current 
piece — is  a  rather  forced  production  and  has  been 
over-praised.  The  two  Ohio  sister  poets,  Alice 
and  Phoebe  Gary,  were  attracted  to  New  York  in 
1850,  as  soon  as  their  literary  success  seemed  as 
sured.  They  made  that  city  their  home  for  the 
remainder  of  their  lives.  Poe  praised  Alice  Gary's 
Pictures  of  Memory,  and  Phoebe's  Nearer  Home 
has  become  a  favorite  hymn.  There  is  nothing 
peculiarly  Western  about  the  verse  of  the  Gary 
sisters.  It  is  the  poetry  of  sentiment,  memory,  and 
domestic  affection,  entirely  feminine,  rather  tame 
and  diffuse  as  a  whole,  but  tender  and  sweet,  cher 
ished  by  many  good  women  and  dear  to  simple 
hearts. 

A  stronger  smack  of  the  soil  is  in  the  negro 
melodies  like  Uncle  Ned,  O  Susanna,  Old  Folks  at 
Home,  Way  Down  South,  Nelly  was  a  Lady,  My 
Old  Kentucky  Home,  etc.,  which  were  the  work 
not  of  any  southern  poet,  but  of  Stephen  G. 
Foster,  a  native  of  Allegheny,  Pa.,  and  a  resident 
of  Cincinnati  and  Pittsburg.  He  composed  the 
words  and  music  of  these,  and  many  others  of  a 
similar  kind,  during  the  years  1847  to  1861.  Taken 
together  they  form  the  most  original  and  vital  ad 
dition  which  this  country  has  made  to  the  psalmody 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  229 

of  the  world,  and  entitle  Foster  to  the  first  rank 
among  American  song  writers. 

As  Foster's  plaintive  melodies  carried  the  pa 
thos  and  humor  of  the  plantation  all  over  the  land, 
so  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin, 
1852,  brought  home  to  millions  of  readers  the  suf 
ferings  of  the  negroes  in  the  "  black  belt "  of  the 
cotton-growing  States.  This  is  the  most  popular 
novel  ever  written  in  America.  Hundreds  of 
thousands  of  copies  were  sold  in  this  country  and 
in  England,  and  some  forty  translations  were  made 
into  foreign  tongues.  In  its  dramatized  form  it 
still  keeps  the  stage,  and  the  statistics  of  circulat 
ing  libraries  show  that  even  no\v  it  is  in  greater 
demand  than  any  other  single  book.  It  did  more 
than  any  other  literary  agency  to  rouse  the  public 
conscience  to  a  sense  of  the  shame  and  horror  of 
slavery;  more  even  than  Garrison's  Liberator;  more 
than  the  indignant  poems  of  Whittier  and  Lowell 
or  the  orations  of  Sumner  and  Phillips.  It  pre 
sented  the  thing  concretely  and  dramatically,  and 
in  particular  it  made  the  odious  Fugitive  Slave 
Law  forever  impossible  to  enforce.  It  was  useless 
for  the  defenders  of  slavery  to  protest  that  the 
picture  was  exaggerated  and  that  overseers  like 
Legree  were  the  exception.  The  system  under 
which  such  brutalities  could  happen,  and  did  some 
times  happen,  was  doomed.  It  is  easy  now  to 
point  out  defects  of  taste  and  art  in  this  master 
piece,  to  show  that  the  tone  is  occasionally  melo 
dramatic,  that  some  of  the  characters  are  conven- 


230  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

tional,  and  that  the  literary  execution  is  in  parts 
feeble  and  in  others  coarse.  In  spite  of  all  it  re 
mains  true  that  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  is  a  great  book, 
the  work  of  genius  seizing  instinctively  upon  its 
opportunity  and  uttering  the  thought  of  the  time 
with  a  power  that  thrilled  the  heart  of  the  nation 
and  of  the  world.  Mrs.  Stowe  never  repeated  her 
first  success.  Some  of  her  novels  of  New  England 
life,  such  as  the  Minister  s  Wooing,  1859,  and  the 
Pearl  of  Orrs  Island,  1862,  have  a  mild  kind  of 
interest,  and  contain  truthful  portraiture  of  pro 
vincial  ways  and  traits  ;  while  later  fictions  of  a 
domestic  type,  like  Pink  and  White  Tyranny,  and 
My  Wife  and  I,  are  really  beneath  criticism. 

There  were  other  Connecticut  writers  contem 
porary  with  Mrs.  Stowe:  Mrs.  L.  H.  Sigourney,  for 
example,  a  Hartford  poetess,  formerly  known  as 
"the  Hemans  of  America,"  but  now  quite  obso 
lete;  and  J.  G.  Percival,  of  New  Haven,  a  shy  and 
eccentric  scholar,  whose  geological  work  was  of 
value,  and  whose  memory  is  preserved  by  one  or 
two  of  his  simpler  poems,  still  in  circulation,  such 
as  To  Seneca  Lake  and  the  Coral  Grove.  Another 
Hartford  poet,  Brainard — already  spoken  of  as  an 
early  friend  of  Whittier — died  young,  leaving  a  few 
pieces  which  show  that  his  lyrical  gift  was  spon 
taneous  and  genuine  but  had  received  little  culti 
vation.  A  much  younger  writer  than  either  of 
these,  Donald  G.  Mitchell,  of  New  Haven,  has  a 
more  lasting  place  in  our  literature,  by  virtue  of 
his  charmingly  written  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor, 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  231 

1850,  and  Dream  Life,  1852,  stories  which  sketch 
themselves  out  in  a  series  -of  reminiscences  and 
lightly  connected  scenes,  and  which  always  appeal 
freshly  to  young  men  because  they  have  that 
dreamy  outlook  upon  life  which  is  characteristic 
of  youth.  But,  upon  the  whole,  the  most  impor 
tant  contribution  made  by  Connecticut  in  that  gen 
eration  to  the  literary  stock  of  America  was  the 
Beecher  family.  Lyman  Beecher  had  been  an  in 
fluential  preacher  and  theologian,  and  a  sturdy  de 
fender  of  orthodoxy  against  Boston  Unitarianism. 
Of  his  numerous  sons  and  daughters,  all  more  or 
less  noted  for  intellectual  vigor  and  independence, 
the  most  eminent  were  Mrs.  Stowe  and  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  the  great  pulpit  orator  of  Brook 
lyn.  Mr.  Beecher  was  too  busy  a  man  to  give 
more  than  his  spare  moments  to  general  litera 
ture.  His  sermons,  lectures,  and  addresses  were 
reported  for  the  daily  papers  and  printed  in  part 
in  book  form ;  but  these  lose  greatly  when  di 
vorced  from  the  large,  warm,  and  benignant  per 
sonality  of  the  man.  His  volumes  made  up  of 
articles  in  the  Independent  and  the  Ledger,  such  as 
Star  Papers,  1855,  and  Eyes  and  Ears,  1862,  con 
tain  many  delightful  morceaux  upon  country  life 
and  similar  topics,  though  they  are  hardly  wrought 
with  sufficient  closeness  and  care  to  take  a  perma 
nent  place  in  letters.  Like  Willis's  Ephemera, 
they  are  excellent  literary  journalism,  but  hardly 
literature. 

We  may  close  our  retrospect  of  American  litera- 


232  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

ture  before  1861  with  a  brief  notice  of  one  of  the 
most  striking  literary  phenomena  of  the  time — 
the  Leaves  of  Grass  of  Walt  Whitman,  published 
at  Brooklyn  in  1855.  The  author,  born  at  West 
Hills,  Long  Island,  in  1819,  had  been  printer, 
school-teacher,  editor,  and  builder.  He  had 
scribbled  a  good  deal  of  poetry  of  the  ordinary 
kind,  which  attracted  little  attention,  but  finding 
conventional  rhymes  and  meters  too  cramping  a 
vehicle  for  his  need  of  expression,  he  discarded 
them  for  a  kind  of  rhythmic  chant,  of  which  the 
following  is  a  fair  specimen: 

"Press  close,  bare  bosom'd  night!     Press  close,  magnetic, 

nourishing  night ! 

Night  of  south  winds  !  night  of  the  few  large  stars  ! 
Still,  nodding  night !  mad,  naked,  summer  night ! " 

The  invention  was  not  altogether  a  new  one.  The 
English  translation  of  the  Psalms  of  David  and  of 
some  of  the  Prophets,  the  Poems  of  Ossian,  and 
some  of  Matthew  Arnold's  unrhymed  pieces,  es 
pecially  the  Strayed  Reveller,  have  an  irregular 
rhythm  of  this  kind,  to  say  nothing  of  the  old 
Anglo-Saxon  poems,  like  Beowulf,  and  the  Script 
ure  paraphrases  attributed  to  Csedmon.  But  this 
species  of  oratio  soluta,  carried  to  the  lengths  to 
which  Whitman  carried  it,  had  an  air  of  novelty 
which  was  displeasing  to  some,  while  to  others, 
weary  of  familiar  measures  and  jingling  rhymes, 
it  was  refreshing  in  its  boldness  and  freedom. 
There  is  no  consenting  estimate  of  this  poet. 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  233 

Many  think  that  his  so-called  poems  are  not  poems 
at  all,  but  simply  a  bad  variety  of  prose;  that  there 
is  nothing  to  him  beyond  a  combination  of  affec 
tation  and  indecency ;  and  that  the  Whitman  culte 
is  a  passing  "fad  "  of  a  few  literary  men,  and  es 
pecially  of  a  number  of  English  critics  like  Ros- 
setti,  Swinburne,  Buchanan,  etc.,  who,  being  deter 
mined  to  have  something  unmistakably  American 
— that  is,  different  from  any  thing  else — in  writings 
from  this  side  of  the  water  before  they  will  acknowl 
edge  any  originality  in  them,  have  been  misled  into 
discovering  in  Whitman  ''the  poet  of  Democracy." 
Others  maintain  that  he  is  the  greatest  of  American 
poets,  or,  indeed,  of  all  modern  poets;  that  he  is 
"  cosmic,"  or  universal,  and  that  he  has  put  an  end 
forever  to  puling  rhymes  and  lines  chopped  up  into 
metrical  feet.  Whether  Whitman's  poetry  is  for 
mally  poetry  at  all  or  merely  the  raw  material  of 
poetry,  the  chaotic  and  amorphous  impression 
which  it  makes  on  readers  of  conservative  tastes 
results  from  his  effort  to  take  up  into  his  verse 
elements  which  poetry  has  usually  left  out  —  the 
ugly,  the  earthy,  and  even  the  disgusting ;  the 
"  under  side  of  things,"  which  he  holds  not  to  be 
prosaic  when  apprehended  with  a  strong,  mascu 
line  joy  in  life  and  nature  seen  in  all  their  aspects. 
The  lack  of  these  elements  in  the  conventional 
poets  seems  to  him  and  his  disciples  like  leaving 
out  the  salt  from  the  ocean,  making  poetry  merely 
pretty  and  blinking  whole  classes  of  facts.  Hence 
the  naturalism  and  animalism  of  some  of  the  divis- 


234  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

ions  in  Leaves  of  Grass,  particularly  that  entitled 
Children  of  Adam,  which  gave  great  offense  by  its 
immodesty,  or  its  outspokenness.  Whitman  holds 
that  nakedness  is  chaste;  that  all  the  functions  of 
the  body  in  healthy  exercise  are  equally  clean  ; 
that  all,  in  fact,  are  divine,  and  that  matter  is  as 
divine  as  spirit.  The  effort  to  get  every  thing  into 
his  poetry,  to  speak  out  his  thought  just  as  it 
comes  to  him,  accounts,  too,  for  his  way  of  cata 
loguing  objects  without  selection.  His  single  ex 
pressions  are  often  unsurpassed  for  descriptive 
beauty  and  truth.  He  speaks  of  "  the  vitreous 
pour  of  the  full  moon,  just  tinged-with  blue,"  of 
the  "  lisp  "  of  the  plane,  of  the  prairies,  "  where 
herds  of  buffalo  make  a  crawling  spread  of  the 
square  miles."  But  if  there  is  any  eternal  distinc 
tion  between  poetry  and  prose  the  most  liberal 
canons  of  the  poetic  art  will  never  agree  to  accept 
lines  like  these : 

"  And  [I]  remember  putting  plasters  on  the  galls  of  his  neck 

and  ankles ; 
He  stayed  with  me  a  week  before  he  was  recuperated,  and 

passed  north." 

Whitman  is  the  spokesman  of  Democracy  and  of 
the  future;  full  of  brotherliness  arid  hope,  loving 
the  warm,  gregarious  pressure  of  the  crowd  and 
the  touch  of  his  comrade's  elbow  in  the  ranks. 
He  liked  the  people — multitudes  of  people;  the 
swarm  of  life  beheld  from  a  Broadway  omnibus  or 
a  Brooklyn  ferry-boat.  The  rowdy  and  the  Negro 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  235 

truck-driver  were  closer  to  his  sympathy  than  the 
gentleman  and  the  scholar.  "  I  loafe  and  invite 
my  soul,"  he  writes:  "I  sound  my  barbaric  yawp 
over  the  roofs  of  the  world."  His  poem  Walt 
Whitman,  frankly  egotistic,  simply  describes  him 
self  as  a  typical,  average  man — the  same  as  any 
other  man,  and  therefore  not  individual  but  uni 
versal.  He  has  great  tenderness  and  heartiness — 
<;  the  good  gray  poet;"  and  during  the  civil  war  he 
devoted  himself  unreservedly  to  the  wounded  sol 
diers  in  the  Washington  hospitals — an  experience 
which  he  has  related  in  the  Dresser  and  else 
where.  It  is  characteristic  of  his  rough  and  ready 
camaraderie  to  use  slang  and  newspaper  English  in 
his  poetry,  to  call  himself  Walt  instead  of  Walter, 
and  to  have  his  picture  taken  in  a  slouch  hat  and 
with  a  flannel  shirt  open  at  the  throat.  His  de- 
criers  allege  that  he  poses  for  effect ;  that  he  is 
simply  a  backward  eddy  in  the  tide,  and  significant 
only  as  a  temporary  reaction  against  ultra  civili 
zation — like  Thoreau,  though  in  a  different  way. 
But  with  all  his  mistakes  in  art  there  is  a  healthy, 
virile,  tumultuous  pulse  of  life  in  his  lyric  utter 
ance  and  a  great  sweep  of  imagination  in  his 
panoramic  view  of  times  and  countries.  One  likes 
to  read  him  because  he  feels  so  good,  enjoys  so 
fully  the  play  of  his  senses,  and  has  such  a  lusty 
confidence  in  his  own  immortality  and  in  the  pros 
pects  of  the  human  race.  Stripped  of  verbiage  and 
repetition,  his  ideas  are  not  many.  His  indebted 
ness  to  Emerson — who  wrote  an  introduction  to 


236  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

the  Leaves  of  Grass — is  manifest.  He  sings  of 
man  and  not  men,  and  the  individual  differences 
of  character,  sentiment,  and  passion,  the  dramatic 
elements  of  life,  find  small  place  in  his  system. 
It  is  too  early  to  say  what  will  be  his  final  position 
in  literary  history.  But  it  is  noteworthy  that  the 
democratic  masses  have  not  accepted  him  yet  as 
their  poet.  Whittier  and  Longfellow,  the  poets  of 
conscience  and  feeling,  are  the  darlings  of  the 
American  people.  The  admiration,  and  even  the 
knowledge  of  Whitman,  are  mostly  esoteric,  con 
fined  to  the  literary  class.  It  is  also  not  without 
significance  as  to  the  ultimate  reception  of  his  in 
novations  in  verse  that  he  has  numerous  parodists, 
but  no  imitators.  The  tendency  among  our  younger 
poets  is  not  toward  the  abandonment  of  rhyme  and 
meter,  but  toward  the  introduction  of  new  stanza 
forms  and  an  increasing  carefulness  and  finish  in 
the  technique  of  their  art.  It  is  observable,  too,  that 
in  his  most  inspired  passages  Whitman  reverts  to 
the  old  forms  of  verse;  to  blank  verse,  for  example, 
in  the  Man-of-  War-Bird : 

"  Thou  who  hast  slept  all  night  upon  the  storm, 
Waking  renewed  on  thy  prodigious  pinions,"  etc., 

and  elsewhere  not  infrequently  to  dactylic  hex 
ameters  and  pentameters: 

"  Earth   of  shine   and   dark,   mottling   the   tide  of  the 

river!  .  .  . 
Far-swooping,    elbowed    earth !    rich,    apple-blossomed 

earth." 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  237 

Indeed,  Whitman's  most  popular  poem,  My  Captain, 
written  after  the  assassination  of  Abraham  Lin 
coln,  differs  little  in  form  from  ordinary  verse,  as 
a  stanza  of  it  will  show: 

"  My  captain  does  not  answer,  his  lips  are  pale  and  still; 
My  father  does  not  feel  my  arm,  he  has  no  pulse  nor  will; 
The  ship  is  anchored  safe  and  sound,  its  voyage  closed  and 

done; 

From  fearful  trip  the  victor  ship  comes  in  with  object  won. 
Exult,  O  shores,  and  ring,  O  bells! 

But  I,  with  mournful  tread, 
Walk  the  deck,  my  captain  lies 
Fallen,  cold  and  dead." 

This  is  from  Drum  Taps,  a  volume  of  poems  of 
the  civil  war.  Whitman  has  also  written  prose 
having  much  the  same  quality  as  his  poetry : 
Democratic  Vistas,  Memoranda  of  the  Civil  War, 
and  more  recently,  Specimen  Days.  His  residence 
of  late  years  has  been  at  Camden,  New  Jersey, 
where  a  centennial  edition  of  his  writings  was 
published  in  1876. 

1.  William   Cullen   Bryant.      Thanatopsis.      To 
a    Waterfowl.       Green     River.       Hymn     to     the 
North    Star.     A    Forest   Hymn.     "O    Fairest    of 
the    Rural   Maids."      June.      The   Death    of  the 
Flowers.     The  Evening  Wind.     The  Battle  Field. 
The  Planting  of  the  Apple-tree.      The  Flood  of 
Years. 

2.  John  Greenleaf  Whittier.     Cassandra  South- 


238  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

wick.  The  New  Wife  and  the  Old.  The  Virginia 
Slave  Mother.  Randolph  of  Roanoke.  Barclay  of 
Ary.  The  Witch  of  Wenham.  Skipper  Ireson's 
Ride.  Marguerite.  Maud  Muller.  Telling  the 
Bees.  My  Playmate.  Barbara  Frietchie.  Icha- 
bod.  Laus  Deo.  Snow  Bound. 

3.  Edgar  Allan  Poe.     The  Raven.     The  Bells. 
Israfel.     Ulalume.     To  Helen.     The  City  in  the 
Sea.     Annabel  Lee.     To  One  in  Paradise.     The 
Sleeper.     The  Valley  of  Unrest.     The  Fall  of  the 
House  of  Usher.     Ligeia.     William  Wilson.     The 
Cask   of  Amontillado.      The   Assignation.      The 
Masque  of  the  Red  Death.     Narrative  of  A.  Gor 
don  Pym. 

4.  N.   P.  Willis.     Select  Prose  Writings.     New 
York:  Charles  Scribner's  Sons.     1886. 

5.  Mrs.   H.   B.   Stowe.      Uncle   Tom's    Cabin. 
Oldtown  Folks. 

6.  W.    G.    Simms.      The    Partisan.      The    Ye- 
massee. 

7.  Bayard  Taylor.      A  Bacchic   Ode.      Hylas. 
Kubleh.      The   Soldier   and  the  Pard.      Sicilian 
Wine.      Taurus.      Serapion.      The  Metempsycho 
sis  of  the  Pine.     The  Temptation  of  Hassan  Ben 
Khaled.    Bedouin  Song.    Euphorion.    The  Quaker 
Widow.     John  Reid.      Lars.     Views  Afoot.     By 
ways  of  Europe.     The   Story  of  Kennett.     The 
Echo  Club. 

8.  Walt  Whitman.      My  Captain.     "When  Li 
lacs  Last  in  the  Door-yard  Bloomed."     "  Out  of 
the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rocking."     Pioneers,  O  Pi- 


LITERATURE  IN  THE  CITIES.  239 

oneers.  The  Mystic  Trumpeter.  A  Woman  at 
Auction.  Sea-shore  Memoirs.  Passage  to  India. 
Mannahatta.  The  Wound  Dresser.  Longings  for 
Home. 

9.  Poets  of  America.     By  E.  C.  Stedman.     Bos 
ton:  Hough  ton,  Mifflin  &  Co.     1885. 


240  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
LITERATURE  SINCE   1861. 

A  GENERATION  has  nearly  passed  since  the  out 
break  of  the  civil  war,  and  although  public  affairs 
are  still  mainly  in  the  hands  of  men  who  had 
reached  manhood  before  the  conflict  opened,  or 
who  were  old  enough  at  that  time  to  remember 
clearly  its  stirring  events,  the  younger  men  who 
are  daily  coming  forward  to  take  their  places 
know  it  only  by  tradition.  It  makes  a  definite 
break  in  the  history  of  our  literature,  and  a  num 
ber  of  new  literary  schools  and  tendencies  have 
appeared  since  its  close.  As  to  the  literature  of 
the  war  itself,  it  was  largely  the  work  of  writers 
who  had  already  reached  or  passed  middle  age. 
All  of  the  more  important  authors  described  in  the 
last  three  chapters  survived  the  Rebellion,  except 
Poe,  who  died  in  1849,  Prescott,  who  died  in  1859, 
and  Thoreau  and  Hawthorne,  who  died  in  the 
second  and  fourth  years  of  the  war,  respectively. 
The  final  and  authoritative  history  of  the  struggle 
has  not  yet  been  written,  and  cannot  be  written 
for  many  years  to  come.  Many  partial  and  tenta 
tive  accounts  have,  however,  appeared,  among 
which  may  be  mentioned,  on  the  northern  side, 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  241 

Horace  Greeley's  American  Conflict,  1864-66; 
Vice-president  Wilson's  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Slave 
Power  in  America,  and  J.  W.  Draper's  American 
Civil  War,  1868-70;  on  the  southern  side  Alexan 
der  H.  Stephens 's  Confederate  States  of  America, 
Jefferson  Davis's  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Confederate 
States  of  America,  and  E.  A.  Pollard's  Lost  Cause. 
These,  with  the  exception  of  Dr.  Draper's  philo 
sophical  narrative,  have  the  advantage  of  being  the 
work  of  actors  in  the  political  or  military  events 
which  they  describe,  and  the  disadvantage  of  being, 
therefore,  partisan — in  some  instances  passionately 
partisan.  A  storehouse  of  materials  for  the  com 
ing  historian  is  also  at  hand  in  Frank  Moore's 
great  collection,  the  Rebellion  Record  ;  in  numer 
ous  regimental  histories  and  histories  of  special 
armies,  departments,  and  battles,  like  W.  Swinton's 
Army  of  the  Potomac  ;  in  the  autobiographies  and 
recollections  of  Grant  and  Sherman  and  other 
military  leaders ;  in  the  "  war  papers,"  now  pub 
lishing  in  the  Century  magazine,  and  in  innumera 
ble  sketches  and  reminiscences  by  officers  and 
privates  on  both  sides. 

The  war  had  its  poetry,  its  humors  and  its 
general  literature,  some  of  which  have  been  men 
tioned  in  connection  with  Whittier,  Lowell,  Holmes, 
Whitman,  and  others;  and  some  of  which  remain 
to  be  mentioned,  as  the  work  of  new  writers,  or 
of  writers  who  had  previously  made  little  mark. 
There  were  war  songs  on  both  sides,  few  of  which 
had  much  literary  value  excepting,  perhaps,  James 
16 


242  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

R.  Randall's  southern  ballad,  Maryland,  My  Mary 
land,  sung  to  the  old  college  air  of  Lauriger  Hora- 
tius,  and  the  grand  martial  chorus  of  John  Brown  s 
Body,  an  old  Methodist  hymn,  to  which  the  north 
ern  armies  beat  time  as  they  went  "marching  on." 
Randall's  song,  though  spirited,  was  marred  by  its 
fire-eating  absurdities  about  "  vandals  "  and  "  min 
ions"  and  "northern  scum,"  the  cheap  insults  of 
the  southern  newspaper  press.  To  furnish  the 
John  Brown  chorus  with  words  worthy  of  the 
music,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe  wrote  her  Battle 
Hymn  of  the  Republic,  a  noble  poem,  but  rather 
too  fine  and  literary  for  a  song,  and  so  never  fully 
accepted  by  the  soldiers.  Among  the  many  verses 
which  voiced  the  anguish  and  the  patriotism  of 
that  stern  time,  which  told  of  partings  and  home 
comings,  of  women  waiting  by  desolate  hearths,  in 
country  homes,  for  tidings  of  husbands  and  sons 
who  had  gone  to  the  war,  or  which  celebrated  in 
dividual  deeds  of  heroism  or  sang  the  thousand 
private  tragedies  and  heart-breaks  of  the  great 
conflict,  by  far  the  greater  number  were  of  too 
humble  a  grade  to  survive  the  feeling  of  the  hour. 
Among  the  best  or  the  most  popular  of  them  were 
Kate  Putnam  Osgood'sZ>ra>/;z^  Home  the  Cou>s,  Mrs. 
Ethel  Lynn  Beers's  All  Quiet  Along  the  Potomac, 
Forceythe  Willson's  Old  Sergeant,  and  John  James 
Piatt's  Riding  to  Vote.  Of  the  poets  whom  the  war 
brought  out,  or  developed,  the  most  noteworthy 
were  Henry  Timrod,  of  South  Carolina,  and  Henry 
Howard  Brownell,  of  Connecticut.  During  the 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  243 

war  Timrod  was  with  the  Confederate  Army  of 
the  West,  as  correspondent  for  the  Charleston 
Mercury,  and  in  1864  he  became  assistant  editor 
of  the  South  Carolinian,  at  Columbia.  Sherman's 
"  march  to  the  sea"  broke  up  his  business,  and  he 
returned  to  Charleston.  A  complete  edition  of  his 
poems  was  published  in  1873,  six  years  after  his 
death.  The  prettiest  of  all  Timrod's  poems  is 
Katie,  but  more  to  our  present  purpose  are  Charles 
ton — written  in  the  time  of  blockade — and  the  Un 
known  Dead,  which  tells 

"  Of  nameless  graves  on  battle  plains, 
Wash'd  by  a  single  winter's  rains, 
Where,  some  beneath  Virginian  hills, 
And  some  by  green  Atlantic  rills, 
Some  by  the  waters  of  the  West, 
A  myriad  unknown  heroes  rest." 

When  the  war  was  over  a  poet  of  New  York 
State,  F.  M.  Finch,  sang  of  these  and  of  other  graves 
in  his  beautiful  Decoration  Day  lyric,  The  Blue 
and  the  Gray,  which  spoke  the  word  of  recon 
ciliation  and  consecration  for  North  and  South 
alike. 

Brownell,  whose  Lyrics  of  a  Day  and  War  Lyrics 
were  published  respectively  in  1864  and  1866,  was 
private  secretary  to  Farragut,  on  whose  flag-ship, 
the  Hartford,  he  was  present  at  several  great 
naval  engagements,  such  as  the  "  Passage  of  the 
Forts  "  below  New  Orleans,  and  the  action  off 
Mobile,  described  in  his  poem,  the  Bay  Fight. 


244  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

With  some  roughness  and  unevenness  of  execu 
tion,  Brownell's  poetry  had  a  fire  which  places 
him  next  to  Whittier  as  the  Korner  of  the  civil  war. 
In  him,  especially,  as  in  Whittier,  is  that  Puritan 
sense  of  the  righteousness  of  his  cause  which 
made  the  battle  for  the  Union  a  holy  war  to  the 
crusaders  against  slavery: 

"  Full  red  the  furnace  fires  must  glow 
That  melt  the  ore  of  mortal  kind : 

The  mills  of  God  are  grinding  slow, 
But  ah,  how  close  they  grind! 

"  To-day  the  Dahlgren  and  the  drum 

Are  dread  apostles  of  his  name ; 
His  kingdom  here  can  only  come 

By  chrism  of  blood  and  flame." 

One  of  the  earliest  martyrs  of  the  war  was  Theo 
dore  Winthrop,  hardly  known  as  a  writer  until  the 
publication  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  of  his  vivid 
sketches  of  Washington  as  a  Camp,  describing  the 
march  of  his  regiment,  the  famous  New  York 
Seventh,  and  its  first  quarters  in  the  Capitol  at 
Washington.  A  tragic  interest  was  given  to  these 
papers  by  Winthrop's  gallant  death  in  the  action 
of  Big  Bethel,  June  10,  1861.  While  this  was  still 
fresh  in  public  recollection  his  manuscript  novels 
were  published,  together  with  a  collection  of  his 
stories  and  sketches  reprinted  from  the  magazines. 
His  novels,  though  in  parts  crude  and  immature, 
have  a  dash  and  buoyancy — an  out-door  air  about 
them — which  give  the  reader  a  winning  impression 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  245 

of  Winthrop's  personality.  The  best  of  them  is, 
perhaps,  Cecil  Dreeme,  a  romance  that  reminds 
one  a  little  of  Hawthorne,  and  the  scene  of  which 
is  the  New  York  University  building  on  Washing 
ton  Square,  a  locality  that  has  been  further  cele 
brated  in  Henry  James's  novel  of  Washington 
Square, 

Another  member  of  this  same  Seventh  Regiment, 
Fitz  James  O'Brien,  an  Irishman  by  birth,  who 
died  at  Baltimore,  in  1862,  from  the  effects  of  a 
wound  received  in  a  cavalry  skirmish,  had  con 
tributed  to  the  magazines  a  number  of  poems 
and  of  brilliant  though  fantastic  tales,  among 
which  the  Diamond  Lens  and  What  Was  It  ?  had 
something  of  Edgar  A.  Poe's  quality.  Another 
Irish-American,  Charles  G.  Halpine,  under  the 
pen-name  of  "Miles  O'Reilly,"  wrote  a  good  many 
clever  ballads  of  the  war,  partly  serious  and  partly 
in  comic  brogue.  Prose  writers  of  note  furnished 
the  magazines  with  narratives  of  their  experience 
at  the  seat  of  war,  among  papers  of  which  kind 
may  be  mentioned  Dr.  Holmes's  My  Search  for 
the  Captain,  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  Colonel 
T.  W.  Higginson's  Army  Life  in  a  Black  Regiment, 
collected  into  a  volume  in  1870. 

Of  the  public  oratory  of  the  war  the  foremost 
example  is  the  ever-memorable  address  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  at  the  dedication  of  the  National 
Cemetery  at  Gettysburg.  The  war  had  brought 
the  nation  to  its  intellectual  majority.  In  the 
stress  of  that  terrible  fight  there  was  no  room  for 


246  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

buncombe  and  verbiage,  such  as  the  newspapers 
and  stump-speakers  used  to  dole  out  in  ante  bel- 
lum  days.  Lincoln's  speech  is  short — a  few  grave 
words  which  he  turned  aside  for  a  moment  to 
speak  in  the  midst  of  his  task  of  saving  the  coun 
try.  The  speech  is  simple,  naked  of  figures,  every 
sentence  impressed  with  a  sense  of  responsibility 
for  the  work  yet  to  be  done  and  with  a  stern  de 
termination  to  do  it.  "  In  a  larger  sense,"  it  says, 
"we  cannot  dedicate,  we  cannot  consecrate,  we 
cannot  hallow  this  ground.  The  brave  men,  living 
and  dead,  who  struggled  here  have  consecrated  it 
far  above  our  poor  power  to  add  or  detract.  The 
world  will  little  note  nor  long  remember  what  we 
say  here,  but  it  can  never  forget  what  they  did 
here.  It  is  for  us,  the  living,  rather  to  be  dedi 
cated  here  to  the  unfinished  work  which  they  who 
fought  here  have  thus  far  so  nobly  advanced.  It 
is  rather  for  us  to  be  here  dedicated  to  the  great 
task  remaining  before  us  ;  that  from  these  honored 
dead  we  take  increased  devotion  to  that  cause  for 
which  they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of  devotion; 
that  we  here  highly  resolve  that  these  dead  shall 
not  have  died  in  vain:  that  this  nation,  under  God, 
shall  have  a  new  birth  of  freedom;  and  that  gov 
ernment  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  peo 
ple,  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth."  Here  was 
eloquence  of  a  different  sort  from  the  sonorous 
perorations  of  Webster  or  the  polished  climaxes  of 
Everett.  As  we  read  the  plain,  strong  language 
of  this  brief  classic,  with  its  solemnity,  its  restraint, 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  247 

its  "  brave  old  wisdom  of  sincerity,"  we  seem  to  see 
the  president's  homely  features  irradiated  with  the 
light  of  coming  martyrdom — 

"  The  kindly-earnest,  brave,  foreseeing  man, 

Sagacious,  patient,  dreading  praise,  not  blame, 
New  birth  of  our  new  soil,  the  first  American." 

Within  the  past  quarter  of  a  century  the  popu 
lar  school  of  American  humor  has  reached  its  cul 
mination.  Every  man  of  genius  who  is  a  humorist 
at  all  is  so  in  a  way  peculiar  to  himself.  There  is 
no  lack  of  individuality  in  the  humor  of  Irving  and 
Hawthorne  and  the  wit  of  Holmes  and  Lowell,  but 
although  they  are  new  in  subject  and  application 
they  are  not  new  in  kind.  Irving,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  the  literary  descendant  of  Addison. 
The  character  sketches  in  Bracebridge  Hall  are  of 
the  same  family  with  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  and 
the  other  figures  of  the  Spectator  Club.  Knicker 
bocker  s  History  of  New  York,  though  purely 
American  in  its  matter,  is  not  distinctly  American 
in  its  method,  which  is  akin  to  the  mock  heroic  of 
Fielding  and  the  irony  of  Swift  in  the  Voyage  to 
Lilliput.  Irving's  humor,  like  that  of  all  the  great 
English  humorists,  had  its  root  in  the  perception 
of  character — of  the  characteristic  traits  of  men 
and  classes  of  men,  as  ground  of  amusement.  It 
depended  for  its  effect,  therefore,  upon  its  truth 
fulness,  its  dramatic  insight  and  sympathy,  as  did 
the  humor  of  Shakspere,  of  Sterne,  Lamb,  and 
Thackeray.  This  perception  of  the  characteristic, 


248  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

when  pushed  to  excess,  issues  in  grotesque  and 
caricature,  as  in  some  of  Dickens's  inferior  crea 
tions,  which  are  little  more  than  personified  single 
tricks  of  manner,  speech,  feature,  or  dress.  Haw 
thorne's  rare  humor  differed  from  Irving's  in  tem 
per  but  not  in  substance,  and  belonged,  like  Irving's, 
to  the  English  variety.  Dr.  Holmes's  more  pro 
nouncedly  comic  verse  does  not  differ  specifically 
from  the  facetice  of  Thomas  Hood,  but  his  prom 
inent  trait  is  wit,  which  is  the  laughter  of  the  head 
as  humor  is  of  the  heart.  The  same  is  true,  with 
qualifications,  of  Lowell,  whose  Jliglow  Papers, 
though  humor  of  an  original  sort  in  their  revela 
tion  of  Yankee  character,  are  essentially  satirical. 
It  is  the  cleverness,  the  shrewdness  of  the  hits  in 
the  J3iglow  Papers,  their  logical,  that  is,  witty  charac 
ter,  as  distinguished  from  their  drollery,  that  arrests 
the  attention.  They  are  funny,  but  they  are  not  so 
funny  as  they  are  smart.  In  all  these  writers  humor 
was  blent  with  more  serious  qualities,  which  gave 
fineness  and  literary  value  to  their  humorous  writ 
ings.  Their  view  of  life  was  not  exclusively  comic. 
But  there  has  been  a  class  of  jesters,  of  professional 
humorists  in  America,  whose  product  is  so  indige 
nous,  so  different,  if  not  in  essence,  yet  at  least  in 
form  and  expression,  from  any  European  humor,  that 
it  may  be  regarded  as  a  unique  addition  to  the  comic 
literature  of  the  world.  It  has  been  accepted  as  such 
in  England,  where  Artemus  Ward  and  Mark  Twain 
are  familiar  to  multitudes  who  have  never  read  the 
One-Hoss-Shay  or  the  Courtiii .  And  though  it 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  249 

would  be  ridiculous  to  maintain  that  either  of 
these  writers  takes  rank  with  Lowell  and  Holmes, 
or  to  deny  that  there  is  an  amount  of  flatness  and 
coarseness  in  many  of  their  labored  fooleries  which 
puts  large  portions  of  their  writings  below  the  line 
where  real  literature  begins,  still  it  will  not  do  to 
ignore  them  as  mere  buffoons,  or  even  to  predict 
that  their  humors  will  soon  be  forgotten.  It  is 
true  that  no  literary  fashion  is  more  subject  to 
change  than  the  fashion  of  a  jest,  and  that  jokes 
that  make  one  generation  laugh  seem  insipid  to 
the  next.  But  there  is  something  perennial  in  the 
fun  of  Rabelais,  whom  Bacon  called  "  the  great 
jester  of  France;"  and  though  the  puns  of  Shak- 
spere's  clowns  are  detestable  the  clowns  themselves 
have  not  lost  their  power  to  amuse. 

The  Americans  are  not  a  gay  people,  but  they 
are  fond  of  a  joke.  Lincoln's  "  little  stories  "  were 
characteristically  Western,  and  it  is  doubtful  wheth 
er  he  was  more  endeared  to  the  masses  by  his  solid 
virtues  than  by  the  humorous  perception  which 
made  him  one  of  them.  The  humor  of  which  we 
are  speaking  now  is  a  strictly  popular  and  national 
possession.  Though  America  has  never,  or  not 
until  lately,  had  a  comic  paper  ranking  with  Punch 
or  Charivari  or  the  Fliegende  Blatter,  every  news 
paper  has  had  its  funny  column.  Our  humorists 
have  been  graduated  from  the  journalist's  desk 
and  sometimes  from  the  printing-press,  and  now 
and  then  a  local  or  country  newspaper  has  risen 
into  sudden  prosperity  from  the  possession  of  a 


250  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

new  humorist,  as  in  the  case  of  G.  D.  Prentice's 
Courier- Journal,  or  more  recently  of  the  Cleveland 
Plain  Dealer,  the  D  anbury  News,  the  Burlington 
Hawkeye,  the  Arkansaw  Traveller,  the  Texas  Sift- 
ings  and  numerous  others.  Nowadays  there  are 
even  syndicates  of  humorists,  who  co-operate  to 
soipply  fun  for  certain  groups  of  periodicals.  Of 
course  the  great  majority  of  these  manufacturers 
of  jests  for  newspapers  and  comic  almanacs  are 
doomed  to  swift  oblivion.  But  it  is  not  so  certain 
that  the  best  of  the  class,  like  Clemens  and  Browne, 
will  not  long  continue  to  be  read  as  illustrative  of 
one  side  of  the  American  mind,  or  that  their  best 
things  will  not  survive  as  long  as  the  mots  of  Syd 
ney  Smith,  which  are  still  as  current  as  ever.  One 
of  the  earliest  of  them  was  Seba  Smith,  who,  under 
the  name  of  Major  Jack  Downing,  did  his  best  to 
make  Jackson's  administration  ridiculous.  B.  P. 
Shillaber's  "  Mrs.  Partington  " — a  sort  of  Amer 
ican  Mrs.  Malaprop — enjoyed  great  vogue  before 
the  war.  Of  a  somewhat  higher  kind  were  the 
Pha>nixiana,  1855,  and  Squibob  Papers,  1856,  of 
Lieutenant  George  H.  Derby,  "John  Phcenix," 
one  of  the  pioneers  of  literature  on  the  Pacific 
coast  at  the  time  of  the  California  gold  fever  of 
'49.  Derby's  proposal  for  A  New  System  of  En 
glish  Grammar,  his  satirical  account  of  the  topo 
graphical  survey  of  the  two  miles  of  road  between 
San  Francisco  and  the  Mission  Dolores,  and  his 
picture  gallery  made  out  of  the  conventional 
houses,  steam-boats,  rail-cars,  runaway  negroes 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  251 

and  other  designs  which  used  to  figure  in  the  ad 
vertising  columns  of  the  newspapers,  were  all  very 
ingenious  and  clever.  But  all  these  pale  before 
Artemus  Ward — •"  Artemus  the  delicious,"  as 
Charles  Reade  called  him — who  first  secured  for 
this  peculiarly  American  type  of  humor  a  hearing 
and  reception  abroad.  Ever  since  the  invention  of 
Hosea  Biglow,  an  imaginary  personage  of  some 
sort,  under  cover  of  whom  the  author  might  con 
ceal  his  own  identity,  has  seemed  a  necessity  to 
our  humorists.  Artemus  Ward  was  a  traveling 
showman  who  went  about  the  country  exhibiting 
a  collection  of  wax  "  figgers  "  and  whose  expe 
riences  and  reflections  were  reported  in  grammar 
and  spelling  of  a  most  ingeniously  eccentric  kind. 
His  inventor  was  Charles  F.  Browne,  originally  of 
Maine,  a  printer  by  trade  and  afterward  a  news 
paper  writer  and  editor  at  Boston,  Toledo  and 
Cleveland,  where  his  comicalities  in  the  Plaindealer 
first  began  to  attract  notice.  In  1860  he  came  to 
New  York  and  joined  the  staff  of  Vanity  Fair,  a 
comic  weekly  of  much  brightness,  which  ran  a 
short  career  and  perished  for  want  of  capital. 
When  Browne  began  to  appear  as  a  public  lect 
urer  people  who  had  formed  an  idea  of  him  from 
his  impersonation  of  the  shrewd  and  vulgar  old 
showman  were  surprised  to  find  him  a  gentle 
manly-looking  young  man,  who  came  upon  the 
platform  in  correct  evening  dress,  and  "  spoke  his 
piece"  in  a  quiet  and  somewhat  mournful  manner, 
stopping  in  apparent  surprise  when  any  one  in  the 


252  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

audience  laughed  at  any  uncommonly  outrageous 
absurdity.  In  London,  where  he  delivered  his 
Lecture  on  the  Mormons,  in  1866,  the  gravity  of  his 
bearing  at  first  imposed  upon  his  hearers,  who  had 
come  to  the  hall  in  search  of  instructive  informa 
tion  and  were  disappointed  at  the  inadequate 
nature  of  the  panorama  which  Browne  had  had 
made  to  illustrate  his  lecture.  Occasionally  some 
hitch  would  occur  in  the  machinery  of  this  and 
the  lecturer  would  leave  the  rostrum  for  a  few 
moments  to  "  work  the  moon  "  that  shone  upon 
the  Great  Salt  Lake,  apologizing  on  his  return  on 
the  ground  that  he  was  "  a  man  short "  and  offering 
"  to  pay  a  good  salary  to  any  respectable  boy  of 
good  parentage  and  education  who  is  a  good 
moonist."  When  it  gradually  dawned  upon  the 
British  intellect  that  these  and  similar  devices  of 
the  lecturer — such  as  the  soft  music  which  he  had 
the  pianist  play  at  pathetic  passages — nay,  that  the 
panorama  and  even  the  lecture  itself  were  of  a 
humorous  intention,  the  joke  began  to  take,  and 
Artemus's  success  in  England  became  assured. 
He  was  employed  as  one  of  the  editors  of  Punch, 
but  died  at  Southampton  in  the  year  following. 

Some  of  Artemus  Ward's  effects  were  produced 
by  cacography  or  bad  spelling,  but  there  war 
genius  in  the  wildly  erratic  way  in  which  he 
handled  even  this  rather  low  order  of  humor.  It 
is  a  curious  commentary  on  the  wretchedness  of 
our  English  orthography  that  the  phonetic  spelling 
of  a  word,  as  for  example,  wuz  for  was,  should  be 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  253 

in  itself  an  occasion  of  mirth.  Other  verbal  effects 
of  a  different  kind  were  among  his  devices,  as  in  the 
passage  where  the  seventeen  widows  of  a  deceased 
Mormon  offered  themselves  to  Artemus.  „ 

"And  I  said,  'Why  is  this  thus?  What  is  the 
reason  of  this  thusness?'  They  hove  a  sigh — 
seventeen  sighs  of  different  size.  They  said — 

"' O,  soon  thou  will  be  gonested  away.' 

"  I  told  them  that  when  I  got  ready  to  leave  a 
place  I  wentested.' 

"  They  said,  '  Doth  not  like  us  ? ' 

"  I  said,  '  I  doth— I  doth.' 

"  I  also  said,  *  I  hope  your  intentions  are  honor 
able,  as  I  am  a  lone  child — my  parents  being  far — 
far  away.' 

"  They  then  said,  *  Wilt  not  marry  us  ? ' 

"  I  said,  *  O  no,  it  cannot  was.' 

"  When  they  cried,  *  O  cruel  man  !  this  is  too 
much  ! — O !  too  much,'  I  told  them  that  it  was  on 
account  of  the  muchness  that  I  declined." 

It  is  hard  to  define  the  difference  between  the 
humor  of  one  writer  and  another,  or  of  one  nation 
and  another.  It  can  be  felt  and  can  be  illus 
trated  by  quoting  examples,  but  scarcely  de 
scribed  in  general  terms.  It  has  been  said  of 
that  class  of  American  humorists  of  which  Ar 
temus  Ward  is  a  representative  that  their  pecul 
iarity  consists  in  extravagance,  surprise,  audacity 
and  irreverence.  But  all  these  qualities  have 
characterized  other  schools  of  humor.  There  is 
the  same  element  of  surprise  in  De  Quincey's 


254  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

anticlimax,  "  Many  a  man  has  dated  his  ruin  from 
some  murder  or  other  which,  perhaps,  at  the  time 
he  thought  little  of,"  as  in  Artemus's  truism  that 
"a  comic  paper  ought  to  publish  a  joke  now  and 
then."  The  violation  of  logic  which  makes  us 
laugh  at  an  Irish  bull  is  likewise  the  source  of  the 
humor  in  Artemus's  saying  of  Jeff  Davis,  that  "  it 
would  have  been  better  than  ten  dollars  in  his 
pocket  if  he  had  never  been  born."  Or  in  his  ad 
vice,  "  Always  live  within  your  income,  even  if 
you  have  to  borrow  money  to  do  so  ;  "  or,  again, 
in  his  announcement  that,  "  Mr.  Ward  will  pay  no 
debts  of  his  own  contracting."  A  kind  of  ludi 
crous  confusion,  caused  by  an  unusual  collocation 
of  words,  is  also  one  of  his  favorite  tricks,  as  when 
he  says  of  Brigham  Young,  "  He's  the  most  mar 
ried  man  I  ever  saw  in  my  life;"  or  when,  having 
been  drafted  at  several  hundred  different  places 
where  he  had  been  exhibiting  his  wax  figures,  he 
says  that  if  he  went  on  he  should  soon  become  a 
regiment,  and  adds,  "  I  never  knew  that  there  was  so 
many  of  me."  With  this  a  whimsical  under-state- 
ment  and  an  affectation  of  simplicity,  as  where  he 
expresses  his  willingness  to  sacrifice  "  even  his 
wife's  relations "  on  the  altar  of  patriotism ;  or, 
where,  in  delightful  unconsciousness  of  his  own 
sins  against  orthography,  he  pronounces  that 
"  Chaucer  was  a  great  poet,  but  he  couldn't  spell," 
or  where  he  says  of  the  feast  of  raw  dog,  tendered 
him  by  the  Indian  chief,  Wocky-bocky,  "  It  don't 
agree  with  me.  I  prefer  simple  food."  On  the 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  255 

whole,  it  may  be  said  of  original  humor  of  this 
kind,  as  of  other  forms  of  originality  in  literature, 
that  the  elements  of  it  are  old,  but  their  combina 
tions  are  novel.  Other  humorists,  like  Henry  W. 
Shaw  ("Josh  Billings"),  and  David  R.  Locke, 
("  Petroleum  V.  Nasby  "),  have  used  bad  spelling 
as  a  part  of  their  machinery  ;  while  Robert  H. 
Newell,  (u  Orpheus  C.  Kerr  "),  Samuel  L.  Clemens, 
("  Mark  Twain  "),  and  more  recently  "  Bill  Nye," 
though  belonging  to  the  same  school  of  low  or 
broad  comedy,  have  discarded  cacography.  Of 
these  the  most  eminent,  by  all  odds,  is  Mark 
Twain,  who  has  probably  made  more  people  laugh 
than  any  other  living  writer.  A  Missourian  by 
birth  (1835),  he  served  the  usual  apprenticeship  at 
type-setting  and  editing  country  newspapers ;  spent 
seven  years  as  a  pilot  on  a  Mississippi  steam-boat, 
and  seven  years  more  mining  and  journalizing  in 
Nevada,  where  he  conducted  the  Virginia  City 
Enterprise  /  finally  drifted  to  San  Francisco,  and 
was  associated  with  Bret  Harte  on  the  Californian, 
and  in  1867  published  his  first  book,  the  Jumping 
Frog.  This  was  succeeded  by  the  Innocents 
Abroad,  1869 ;  Roughing  It,  1872  ;  A  Tramp 
Abroad,  1880,  and  by  others  not  so  good. 

Mark  Twain's  drolleries  have  frequently  the 
same  air  of  innocence  and  surprise  as  Artemus 
Ward's,  and  there  is  a  like  suddenness  in  his  turns 
of  expression,  as  where  he  speaks  of  "the  calm 
confidence  of  a  Christian  with  four  aces."  If  he 
did  not  originate,  he  at  any  rate  employed  very 


256  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

effectively  that  now  familiar  device  of  the  news 
paper  "funny  man,"  of  putting  a  painful  situation 
euphemistically,  as  when  he  says  of  a  man  who 
was  hanged  that  he  "  received  injuries  which  ter 
minated  in  his  death."  He  uses  to  the  full  extent 
the  American  humorist's  favorite  resources  of  ex 
aggeration  and  irreverence.  An  instance  of  the 
former  quality  may  be  seen  in  his  famous  descrip 
tion  of  a  dog  chasing  a  coyote,  in  Roughing  It,  or 
in  his  interview  with  the  lightning-rod  agent  in 
Mark  Twain  s  Sketches,  1875.  He  is  a  shrewd  ob 
server,  and  his  humor  has  a  more  satirical  side 
than  Artemus  Ward's,  sometimes  passing  into 
downright  denunciation.  He  delights  particularly 
in  ridiculing  sentimental  humbug  and  moralizing 
cant.  He  runs  a  tilt,  as  has  been  said,  at  "copy 
book  texts,''  at  the  temperance  reformer,  the  tract 
distributor,  the  Good  Boy  of  Sunday- school 
literature,  and  the  women  who  send  bouquets 
and  sympathetic  letters  to  interesting  criminals. 
He  gives  a  ludicrous  turn  to  famous  historical 
anecdotes,  such  as  the  story  of  George  Washington 
and  his  little  hatchet;  burlesques  the  time-honored 
adventure,  in  nautical  romances,  of  the  starving 
crew  casting  lots  in  the  long  boat,  and  spoils  the 
dignity  of  antiquity  by  modern  trivialities,  saying 
of  a  discontented  sailor  on  Columbus's  ship,  "  He 
wanted  fresh  shad."  The  fun  of  Innocents  Abroad 
consists  in  this  irreverent  application  of  modern, 
common  sense,  utilitarian,  democratic  standards  to 
the  memorable  places  and  historic  associations  of 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  257 

Europe.  Tried  by  this  test  the  Old  Masters  in 
the  picture  galleries  become  laughable.  Abelard 
was  a  precious  scoundrel,  and  the  raptures  of  the 
guide  books  are  parodied  without  mercy.  The 
tourist  weeps  at  the  grave  of  Adam.  At  Genoa 
he  drives  the  cicerone  to  despair  by  pretending 
never  to  have  heard  of  Christopher  Columbus,  and 
inquiring  innocently,  "  Is  he  dead  ?  "  It  is  Europe 
vulgarized  and  stripped  of  its  illusions — Europe 
seen  by  a  Western  newspaper  reporter  without  any 
"historic  imagination." 

The  method  of  this  whole  class  of  humorists  is 
the  opposite  of  Addison's  or  Irving's  or  Thack 
eray's.  It  does  not  amuse  by  the  perception  of  the 
characteristic.  It  is  not  founded  upon  truth,  but 
upon  incongruity,  distortion,  unexpectedness. 
Every  thing  in  life  is  reversed,  as  in  opera  bouffe, 
and  turned  topsy  turvy,  so  that  paradox  takes  the 
place  of  the  natural  order  of  things.  Nevertheless 
they  have  supplied  a  wholesome  criticism  upon 
sentimental^  excesses,  and  the  world  is  in  their 
debt  for  many  a  hearty  laugh. 

In  the  Atlantic  Monthly  for  December,  1863, 
appeared  a  tale  entitled  the  Man  Without  a 
Country,  which  made  a  great  sensation,  and  did 
much  to  strengthen  patriotic  feeling  in  one  of  the 
darkest  hours  of  the  nation's  history.  It  was  the 
story  of  one  Philip  Nolan,  an  army  officer,  whose 
head  had  been  turned  by  Aaron  Burr,  and  who, 
having  been  censured  by  a  court-martial  for  some 
minor  offense,  exclaimed,  petulantly,  upon  men- 
17 


258  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

tion  being  made  of  the  United  States  Government, 
"Damn  the  United  States!  I  wish  that  I  might 
never  hear  the  United  States  mentioned  again." 
Thereupon  he  was  sentenced  to  have  his  wish, 
and  was  kept  all  his  life  aboard  the  vessels  of  the 
navy,  being  sent  off  on  long  voyages  and  trans 
ferred  from  ship  to  ship,  with  orders  to  those  in 
charge  that  his  country  and  its  concerns  should 
never  be  spoken  of  in  his  presence.  Such  an  air 
of  reality  was  given  to  the  narrative  by  incidental 
references  to  actual  persons  and  occurrences  that 
many  believed  it  true,  and  some  were  found  who 
remembered  Philip  Nolan,  but  had  heard  different 
versions  of  his  career.  The  author  of  this  clever 
hoax — if  hoax  it  maybe  called — was  Edward  Everett 
Hale,  a  Unitarian  clergyman  of  Boston,  who  pub 
lished  a  collection  of  stories  in  1868,  under  the  fan 
tastic  title,  If,  Yes,  and  Perhaps,  indicating  thereby 
that  some  of  the  tales  were  possible,  some  of  them 
probable,  and  others  might  even  be  regarded  as 
essentially  true.  A  similar  collection,  His  Level 
Best  and  Other  Stories  was  published  in  1873,  and 
in  the  interval  three  volumes  of  a  somewhat  dif 
ferent  kind,  the  Ing  ham  Papers  and  Sy&aris  and 
Other  Homes,  both  in  1869,  and  Ten  Times  One  Is 
Ten,  in  1871.  The  author  shelters  himself  behind 
the  imaginary  figure  of  Captain  Frederic  Ingham, 
pastor  of  the  Sandemanian  Church  at  Naguadavick, 
and  the  same  characters  have  a  way  of  re-appearing 
in  his  successive  volumes  as  old  friends  of  the 
reader,  which  is  pleasant  at  first,  but  in  the  end  a 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  '259 

little  tiresome.  Mr.  Hale  is  one  of  the  most  orig 
inal  and  ingenious  of  American  story  writers. 
The  old  device  of  making  wildly  improbable  in 
ventions  appear  like  fact  by  a  realistic  treatment 
of  details  —  a  device  employed  by  Swift  and 
Edgar  Poe,  and  more  lately  by  Jules  Verne  — 
became  quite  fresh  and  novel  in  his  hands,  and 
was  managed  with  a  humor  all  his  own.  Some  of 
his  best  stones  are  My  Double  and  How  He  Undid 
Me,  describing  ho\v  a  busy  clergyman  found  an 
Irishman  who  looked  so  much  like  himself  that  he 
trained  him  to  pass  as  his  duplicate,  and  sent  him 
to  do  duty  in  his  stead  at  public  meetings,  dinners, 
etc.,  thereby  escaping  bores  and  getting  time  for 
real  work  ;  the  Brick  Moon,  a  story  of  a  projectile 
built  and  launched  into  space,  to  revolve  in  a 
fixed  meridian  about  the  earth  and  serve  mariners 
as  a  mark  of  longitude ;  the  Rag  Man  and  Rag 
Woman,  a  tale  of  an  impoverished  couple  who 
made  a  competence  by  saving  the  pamphlets,  ad 
vertisements,  wedding  cards,  etc.,  that  came  to 
them  through  the  mail,  and  developing  a  paper 
business  on  that  basis  ;  and  the  Skeleton  in  the 
Closet,  which  shows  how  the  fate  of  the  South 
ern  Confederacy  was  involved  in  the  adventures 
of  a  certain  hoop-skirt,  "built  in  the  eclipse  and 
rigged  with  curses  dark."  Mr.  Hale's  historical 
scholarship  and  his  exact  habit  of  mind  have 
aided  him  in  the  art  of  giving  vraisemblance  to 
absurdities.  He  is  known  in  philanthropy  as  well 
as  in  letters,  and  his  tales  have  a  cheerful,  busy, 


260  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

practical  way  with  them  in  consonance  with  his 
motto,  "  Look  up  and  not  down,  look  forward 
and  not  back,  look  out  and  not  in,  and  lend  a 
hand." 

It  is  too  soon  to  sum  up  the  literary  history  of 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century.  The  writers  who 
have  given  it  shape  are  still  writing,  and  their 
work  is  therefore  incomplete.  But  on  the  slight 
est  review  of  it  two  facts  become  manifest:  first, 
that  New  England  has  lost  its  long  monopoly  ; 
and,  secondly,  that  a  marked  feature  of  the  period 
is  the  growth  of  realistic  fiction.  The  electric 
tension  of  the  atmosphere  for  thirty  years  preced 
ing  the  civil  war,  the  storm  and  stress  of  great 
public  contests,  and  the  intellectual  stir  produced 
by  transcendentalism  seem  to  have  been  more  fa 
vorable  to  poetry  and  literary  idealism  than  pres 
ent  conditions  are.  At  all  events  there  are  no  new 
poets  who  rank  with  Whittier,  Longfellow,  Lowell, 
and  others  of  the  elder  generation,  although  George 
H.  Boker,  in  Philadelphia,  R.  H.  Stoddard  and 
E.  C.  Stedman,  in  New  York,  and  T.  B.  Aldrich, 
first  in  New  York  and  afterward  in  Boston,  have 
written  creditable  verse;  not  to  speak  of  younger 
writers,  whose  work,  however,  for  the  most  part, 
has  been  more  distinguished  by  delicacy  of  execu 
tion  than  by  native  impulse.  Mention  has  been 
made  of  the  establishment  of  Harper's  Monthly 
Magazine,  which,  under  the  conduct  of  its  accom 
plished  editor,  George  W.  Curtis,  has  provided  the 
public  with  an  abundance  of  good  reading.  The 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  261 

old  Putnam  s  Monthly,  which  ran  from  1853  to 
1858,  and  had  a  strong  corps  of  contributors,  was 
revived  in  1868,  and  continued  by  that  name  till 
1870,  when  it  was  succeeded  by  Scribner's  Monthly, 
under  the  editorship  of  Dr.  J.  G.  Holland,  and 
this  in  1881  by  the  Century,  an  efficient  rival  of 
Harper's  in  circulation,  in  literary  excellence,  and 
in  the  beauty  of  its  wood  engraving,  the  American 
school  of  which  art  these  two  great  periodicals 
have  done  much  to  develop  and  encourage.  An 
other  New  York  monthly,  the  Galaxy,  ran  from 
1866  to  1878,  and  was  edited  by  Richard  Grant 
White.  During  the  present  year  a  new  Scrib- 
ners  Magazine  has  also  taken  the  field.  The 
Atlantic,  in  Boston,  and  Lippincotfs,  in  Philadel 
phia,  are  no  unworthy  competitors  with  these  for 
public  favor. 

During  the  forties  began  a  new  era  of  national 
expansion,  somewhat  resembling  that  described  in 
a  former  chapter,  and,  like  that,  bearing  fruit 
eventually  in  literature.  The  cession  of  Florida 
to  the  United  States  in  1845,  and  the  annexation  of 
Texas  in  the  same  year,  were  followed  by  the  pur 
chase  of  California  in  1847,  and  its  admission  as  a 
State  in  1850.  In  1849  came  the  great  rush  to  the 
California  gold  fields.  San  Francisco,  at  first  a 
mere  collection  of  tents  and  board  shanties,  with 
a  few  adobe  huts,  grew  with  incredible  rapidity 
into  a  great  city;  the  wicked  and  wonderful  city 
apostrophized  by  Bret  Harte  in  his  poem,  San 
Francisco : 


262  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

"  Serene,  indifferent  of  Fate, 
Thou  sittest  at  the  Western  Gate ; 
Upon  thy  heights  so  lately  won 
Still  slant  the  banners  of  the  sun.  .  .  , 
I  know  thy  cunning  and  thy  greed, 
Thy  hard,  high  lust  and  willful  deed." 

The  adventurers  of  all  lands  and  races  who  flocked 
to  the  Pacific  coast  found  there  a  motley  state  of 
society  between  civilization  and  savagery.  There 
were  the  relics  of  the  old  Mexican  occupation,  the 
Spanish  missions,  with  their  Christianized  Indians; 
the  wild  tribes  of  the  plains — Apaches,  Utes,  and 
Navajoes;  the  Chinese  coolies  and  washermen,  all 
elements  strange  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard  and  the 
States  of  the  interior.  The  gold-hunters  crossed, 
in  stages  or  caravans,  enormous  prairies,  alkaline 
deserts  dotted  with  sage  brush  and  seamed  by 
deep  canons,  and  passes  through  gigantic  mount 
ain  ranges.  On  the  coast  itself  nature  was  unfa 
miliar  :  the  climate  was  sub-tropical;  fruits  and 
vegetables  grew  to  a  mammoth  size,  corresponding 
to  the  enormous  redwoods  in  the  Mariposa  groves 
and  the  prodigious  scale  of  the  scenery  in  the  val 
ley  of  the  Yo  Semite  and  the  snow-capped  peaks 
of  the  Sierras.  At  first  there  were  few  women,  and 
the  men  led  a  wild,  lawless  existence  in  the  mining 
camps.  Hard  upon  the  heels  of  the  prospector 
followed  the  dram-shop,  the  gambling-hell,  and  the 
dance-hall.  Every  man  carried  his  "Colt,"  and 
looked  out  for  his  own  life  and  his  *'  claim." 
Crime  went  unpunished  or  was  taken  in  hand, 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  263 

when  it  got  too  rampant,  by  vigilance  committees. 
In  the  diggings,  shaggy  frontiersmen  and  "pikes  " 
from  Missouri  mingled  with  the  scum  of  eastern 
cities  and  with  broken-down  business  men  and 
young  college  graduates  seeking  their  fortune. 
Surveyors  and  geologists  came  of  necessity,  specu 
lators  in  mining  stock  and  city  lots  set  up  their 
offices  in  the  towns;  later  came  a  sprinkling  of 
school-teachers  and  ministers.  Fortunes  were 
made  in  one  day  and  lost  the  next  at  poker  or  loo. 
To-day  the  lucky  miner  who  had  struck  a  good 
"lead  "  was  drinking  champagne  out  of  pails  and 
treating  the  town ;  to-morrow  he  was  "  busted," 
and  shouldered  the  pick  for  a  new  onslaught  upon 
his  luck.  This  strange,  reckless  life,  was  not  with 
out  fascination,  and  highly  picturesque  and  dra 
matic  elements  were  present  in  it  It  was,  as  Bret 
Harte  says,  "  an  era  replete  with  a  certain  heroic 
Greek  poetry,"  and  sooner  or  later  it  was  sure  to 
find  its  poet  During  the  war  California  remained 
loyal  to  the  Union,  but  was  too  far  from  the  seat 
of  conflict  to  experience  any  serious  disturbance, 
and  went  on  independently  developing  its  own  re 
sources  and  becoming  daily  more  civilized.  By 
1868  San  Francisco  had  a  literary  magazine,  the 
Overland  Monthly,  which  ran  until  1875.  It  had  a 
decided  local  flavor,  and  the  vignette  on  its  title- 
page  was  a  happily  chosen  emblem,  representing  a 
grizzly  bear  crossing  a  railway  track.  In  an  early 
number  of  the  Overland  was  a  story  entitled  the 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  by  Francis  Bret  Harte,  a 


264  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

native  of  Albany,  N.  Y.,  1835,  who  had  come  to 
California  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  in  time  to  catch 
the  unique  aspects  of  the  life  of  the  Forty-niners, 
before  their  vagabond  communities  had  settled 
down  into  the  law-abiding  society  of  the  present 
day.  His  first  contribution  was  followed  by  other 
stories  and  sketches  of  a  similar  kind,  such  as  the 
Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  Miggles,  and  Tennessee's 
Partner,  and  by  verses,  serious  and  humorous,  of 
which  last,  Plain  Language  from  Truthful  James, 
better  known  as  the  Heathen  Chinee,  made  an  im 
mediate  hit,  and  carried  its  author's  name  into 
every  corner  of  the  English-speaking  world.  Jn 
1871  he  published  a  collection  of  his  tales,  another 
of  his  poems,  and  a  volume  of  very  clever  parodies, 
Condensed  Novels,  which  rank  with  Thackeray's 
Nwels  by  Eminent  Hands.  Bret  Harte's  California 
stories  were  vivid,  highly-colored  pictures  of  life  in 
the  mining  camps  and  raw  towns  of  the  Pacific 
coast.  The  pathetic  and  the  grotesque  went  hand 
in  hand  in  them,  and  the  author  aimed  to  show 
how  even  in  the  desperate  characters  gathered  to 
gether  there — the  fortune  hunters,  gamblers, thieves, 
murderers,  drunkards,  and  prostitutes — the  latent 
nobility  of  human  nature  asserted  itself  in  acts  of 
heroism,  magnanimity,  self-sacrifice,  and  touching 
fidelity.  The  same  men  who  cheated  at  cards  and 
shot  each  another  down  with  tipsy  curses  were 
capable  on  occasion  of  the  most  romantic  gener 
osity  and  the  most  delicate  chivalry.  Critics  were 
not  wanting  who  held  that,  in  the  matter  of  dialect 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  265 

and  manners  and  other  details,  the  narrator  was 
not  true  to  the  facts.  This  was  a  comparatively 
unimportant  charge  ;  but  a  more  serious  question 
was  the  doubt  whether  his  characters  were  essen 
tially  true  to  human  nature,  whether  the  wild  soil 
of  revenge  and  greed  and  dissolute  living  ever 
yields  such  flowers  of  devotion  as  blossom  in  Ten 
nessee's  Partner  and  the  Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat. 
However  this  may  be,  there  is  no  question  as  to 
Harte's  power  as  a  narrator.  His  short  stories  are 
skillfully  constructed  and  effectively  told.  They 
never  drag,  and  are  never  overladen  with  descrip 
tion,  reflection,  or  other  lumber. 

In  his  poems  in  dialect  we  find  the  same  variety 
of  types  and  nationalities  characteristic  of  the  Pa 
cific  coast:  the  little  Mexican  maiden,  Pachita,  in 
the  old  mission  garden;  the  wicked  Bill  Nye,  who 
tries  to  cheat  the  Heathen  Chinee  at  euchre  and 
to  rob  Injin  Dick  of  his  winning  lottery  ticket; 
the  geological  society  on  the  Stanislaw  who  settle 
their  scientific  debates  with  chunks  of  old  red 
sandstone  and  the  skulls  of  mammoths;  the  un 
lucky  Mr.  Dow,  who  finally  strikes  gold  while  dig 
ging  a  well,  and  builds  a  house  with  a  "coopilow;" 
and  Flynn,  of  Virginia,  who  saves  his  "  pard's  " 
life,  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  own,  by  holding  up  the 
timbers  in  the  caving  tunnel.  These  poems  are 
mostly  in  monologue,  like  Browning's  dramatic 
lyrics,  exclamatory  and  abrupt  in  style,  and  with 
a  good  deal  of  indicated  action,  as  in  Jim,  where 
a  miner  comes  into  a  bar-room,  looking  for  his  old 


266  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

chum,  learns  that  he  is  dead,  and  is  just  turning 
away  to  hide  his  emotion,  when  he  recognizes  Jim 
in  his  informant: 

"  Well,  thar— Good-by— 
No  more,  sir — I — 

Eh? 

What's  that  you  say  ? — 
Why,  dern  it! — sho! — 
No?     Yes!     By  Jo! 

Sold! 

Sold!     Why,  you  limb; 
You  ornery, 

Derned  old 
Long-legged  Jim! " 

Bret  Harte  had  many  imitators,  and  not  only  did 
our  newspaper  poetry  for  a  number  of  years  abound 
in  the  properties  of  Californian  life,  such  as  gulches, 
placers,  divides,  etc.,  but  writers  further  east  ap 
plied  his  method  to  other  conditions.  Of  these 
by  far  the  most  successful  was  John  Hay,  a  native 
of  Indiana  and  private  secretary  to  President  Lin 
coln,  whose  Little  Breeches,  Jim  Bludso,  and  Mys 
tery  of  Gilgal  have  rivaled  Bret  Harte's  own  verses 
in  popularity.  In  the  last-named  piece  the  reader 
is  given  to  feel  that  there  is  something  rather 
cheerful  and  humorous  in  a  bar-room  fight  which 
results  in  "the  gals  that  winter,  as  a  rule,"  going 
"  alone  to  the  singing  school."  In  the  two  former 
we  have  heroes  of  the  Bret  Harte  type,  the  same 
combination  of  superficial  wickedness  with  inher 
ent  loyalty  and  tenderness.  The  profane  farmer 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  267 

of  the  South-west,  who  "doesn't  pan  out  on  the 
prophets,"  and  who  had  taught  his  little  son  "  to 
chaw  terbacker,  just  to  keep  his  milk-teeth  white," 
but  who  believes  in  God  and  the  angels  ever  since 
the  miraculous  recovery  of  the  same  little  son  when 
lost  on  the  prairie  in  a  blizzard ;  and  the  unsaintly 
and  bigamistic  captain  of  the  Prairie  Belle,  who 
died  like  a  hero,  holding  the  nozzle  of  his  burning 
boat  against  the  bank 

"  Till  the  last  galoot's  ashore." 

The  manners  and  dialect  of  other  classes  and 
sections  of  the  country  have  received  abundant 
illustration  of  late  years.  Edward  Eggleston's 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster,  1871,  and  his  other  novels 
are  pictures  of  rural  life  in  the  early  days  of  Indi 
ana.  Western  Windows,  a  volume  of  poems  by 
John  James  Piatt,  another  native  of  Indiana,  had 
an  unmistakable  local  coloring.  Charles  G.  Le- 
land,  of  Philadelphia,  in  his  Hans  Breitmann  bal 
lads,  in  dialect,  gave  a  humorous  presentation  of 
the  German-American  element  in  the  cities.  By 
the  death,  in  1881,  of  Sidney  Lanier,  a  Georgian 
by  birth,  the  South  lost  a  poet  of  rare  promise, 
whose  original  genius  was  somewhat  hampered  by 
his  hesitation  between  two  arts  of  expression,  mu 
sic  and  verse,  and  by  his  effort  to  co-ordinate 
them.  His  Science  of  English  Verse,  1880,  was  a 
most  suggestive,  though  hardly  convincing,  state 
ment  of  that  theory  of  their  relation  which  he  was 
working  out  in  his  practice.  Some  of  his  pieces, 


268  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

like  the  Mocking  Bird  and  the  Song  of  the  Chatta- 
hoochie,  are  the  most  characteristically  Southern 
poetry  that  has  been  written  in  America.  Joel 
Chandler  Harris's  Uncle  Remus  stories,  in  Negro 
dialect,  are  transcripts  from  the  folk-lore  of  the 
plantations,  while  his  collection  of  stories,  At 
Teague  Poteefs,  together  with  Miss  Murfree's  In 
the  Tennessee  Mountains  and  her  other  books  have 
made  the  Northern  public  familiar  with  the  wild 
life  of  the  "  moonshiners,"  who  distill  illicit  whis 
key  in  the  mountains  of  Georgia,  North  Carolina, 
and  Tennessee.  These  tales  are  not  only  exciting 
in  incident,  but  strong  and  fresh  in  their  delinea 
tions  of  character.  Their  descriptions  of  mountain 
scenery  are  also  impressive,  though,  in  the  case  of 
the  last  named  writer,  frequently  too  prolonged. 
George  W.  Cable's  sketches  of  French  Creole  life 
in  New  Orleans  attracted  attention  by  their  fresh 
ness  and  quaintness  when  published  in  the  maga 
zines  and  re-issued  in  book  form  as  Old  Creole 
Days,  in  1879.  His  first  regular  novel,  the  Gran- 
dissimes,  1880,  was  likewise  a  story  of  Creole  life. 
It  had  the  same  winning  qualities  as  his  short 
stories  and  sketches,  but  was  an  advance  upon 
them  in  dramatic  force,  especially  in  the  intensely 
tragic  and  powerfully  told  episode  of  "  Bras 
Coup£."  Mr.  Cable  has  continued  his  studies  of1 
Louisiana  types  and  ways  in  his  later  books,  but 
the  Grandissimes  still  remains  his  master-piece. 
All  in  all,  he  is,  thus  far,  the  most  important  liter 
ary  figure  of  the  New  South,  and  the  justness  and 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  269 

delicacy  of  his  representations  of  life  speak  vol 
umes  for  the  sobering  and  refining  agency  of  the 
civil  war  in  the  States  whose  "  cause'"  was  "lost," 
but  whose  true  interests  gained  even  more  by  the 
loss  than  did  the  interests  of  the  victorious 
North. 

The  four  writers  last  mentioned  have  all  come 
to  the  front  within  the  past  eight  or  ten  years,  and, 
in  accordance  with  the  plan  of  this  sketch,  receive 
here  a  mere  passing  notice.  It  remains  to  close 
our  review  of  the  literary  history  of  the  period 
since  the  war  with  a  somewhat  more  extended  ac 
count  of  the  two  favorite  novelists  whose  work  has 
done  more  than  any  thing  else  to  shape  the  move 
ment  of  recent  fiction.  These  are  Henry  James, 
Jr.,  and  William  Dean  Howells.  Their  writings, 
though  dissimilar  in  some  respects,  are  alike  in 
this,  that  they  are  analytic  in  method  and  realistic 
in  spirit.  Cooper  was  a  romancer  pure  and  sim 
ple  ;  he  wrote  the  romance  of  adventure  and  of 
external  incident.  Hawthorne  went  much  deeper, 
and  with  a  finer  spiritual  insight  dealt  with  the  real 
passions  of  the  heart  and  with  men's  inner  experi 
ences.  This  he  did  with  truth  and  power;  but,  al 
though  himself  a  keen  observer  of  whatever  passed 
before  his  eyes,  he  was  not  careful  to  secure  a  pho 
tographic  fidelity  to  the  surface  facts  of  speech, 
dress,  manners,  etc.  Thus  the  talk  of  his  charac 
ters  is  book  talk,  and  not  the  actual  language  of 
the  parlor  or  the  street,  with  its  slang,  its  colloquial 
ease  and  the  intonations  and  shadings  of  phrase 


270  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

and  pronunciation  which  mark  different  sections 
of  the  country  and  different  grades  of  society. 
His  attempts  at  dialect,  for  example,  were  of  the 
slenderest  kind.  His  art  is  ideal,  and  his  romances 
certainly  do  not  rank  as  novels  of  real  life.  But 
with  the  growth  of  a  richer  and  more  complicated 
society  in  America  fiction  has  grown  more  social 
and  more  minute  in  its  observation.  It  would  not 
be  fair  to  classify  the  novels  of  James  and  How- 
ells  as  the  fiction  of  manners  merely;  they  are 
also  the  fiction  of  character,  but  they  aim  to  de 
scribe  people  not  only  as  they  are,  in  their  inmost 
natures,  but  also  as  they  look  and  talk  and  dress. 
They  try  to  express  character  through  manners, 
which  is  the  way  in  which  it  is  most  often  ex 
pressed  in  the  daily  existence  of  a  conventional 
society.  It  is  a  principle  of  realism  not  to  select 
exceptional  persons  or  occurrences,  but  to  take 
average  men  and  women  and  their  average  expe 
riences.  The  realists  protest  that  the  moving  in 
cident  is  not  their  trade,  and  that  the  stories  have 
all  been  told.  They  want  no  plot  and  no  hero. 
They  will  tell  no  rounded  tale  with  a  denouement, 
in  which  all  the  parts  are  distributed,  as  in  the 
fifth  act  of  an  old-fashioned  comedy;  but  they  will 
take  a  transcript  from  life  and  end  when  they  get 
through,  without  informing  the  reader  what  be 
comes  of  the  characters.  And  they  will  try  to 
interest  this  reader  in  "  poor  real  life  "  with  its 
"  foolish  face."  Their  acknowledged  masters  are 
Balzac,  George  Eliot,  Turgenieff,  and  Anthony 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  271 

Trollope,  and  they  regard  novels  as  studies  in 
sociology,  honest  reports  of  the  writer's  impres 
sions,  which  may  not  be  without  a  certain  scien 
tific  value  even. 

Mr.  James's  peculiar  province  is  the  interna 
tional  novel ;  a  field  which  he  created  for  himself, 
but  which  he  has  occupied  in  company  with  How- 
ells,  Mrs.  Burnett,  and  many  others.  He  was  born 
into  the  best  traditions  of  New  England  culture, 
his  father  being  a  resident  of  Cambridge,  and  a 
forcible  writer  on  philosophical  subjects,  and  his 
brother,  William  James,  a  professor  in  Harvard 
University.  The  novelist  received  most  of  his 
schooling  in  Europe,  and  has  lived  much  abroad, 
with  the  result  that  he  has  become  half  denation 
alized  and  has  engrafted  a  cosmopolitan  indiffer 
ence  upon  his  Yankee  inheritance.  This,  indeed, 
has  constituted  his  opportunity.  A  close  observer 
and  a  conscientious  student  of  the  literary  art,  he 
has  added  to  his  intellectual  equipment  the  advan 
tage  of  a  curious  doubleness  in  his  point  of  view. 
He  looks  at  America  with  the  eyes  of  a  foreigner 
and  at  Europe  with  the  eyes  of  an  American.  He 
has  so  far  thrown  himself  out  of  relation  with 
American  life  that  he  describes  a  Boston  horse- 
car  or  a  New  York  hotel  table  with  a  sort  of 
amused  \vonder.  His  starting-point  was  in  criti 
cism,  and  he  has  always  maintained  the  critical 
attitude.  He  took  up  story-writing  in  order  to 
help  himself,  by  practical  experiment,  in  his 
chosen  art  of  literary  criticism,  and  his  volume  on 


272  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

French  Poets  and  Novelists,  1878,  is  by  no  means 
the  least  valuable  of  his  books.  His  short  stories 
in  the  magazines  were  collected  into  a  volume  in 
1875,  with  the  title,  A  Passionate  Pilgrim  and 
Other  Stories.  One  or  two  of  these,  as  the  Last  of 
the  Valcrii  and  the  Madonna  of  the  Future,  suggest 
Hawthorne,  a  very  unsympathetic  study  of  whom 
James  afterward  contributed  to  the  "  English  Men 
of  Letters  "  series.  But  in  the  name-story  of  the 
collection  he  was  already  in  the  line  of  his  future 
development.  This  is  the  story  of  a  middle-aged 
invalid  American,  who  comes  to  England  in  search 
of  health,  and  finds,  too  late,  in  the  mellow  atmos 
phere  of  the  mother  country,  the  repose  and  the 
congenial  surroundings  which  he  has  all  his  life 
been  longing  for  in  his  raw  America.  The  pathos 
of  his  self-analysis  and  his  confession  of  failure  is 
subtly  imagined.  The  impressions  which  he  and 
his  far-away  English  kinsfolk  make  on  one  an 
other,  their  mutual  attraction  and  repulsion,  are 
described  with  that  delicate  perception  of  national 
differences  which  makes  the  humor  and  sometimes 
the  tragedy  of  James's  later  books,  like  the  Amer 
ican,  Dai*y  Miller,  the  Europeans,  and  An  Interna 
tional  Episode.  His  first  novel  was  Roderick  Hud 
son,  1876,  not  the  most  characteristic  of  his  fictions, 
but  perhaps  the  most  powerful  in  its  grasp  of  ele 
mentary  passion.  The  analytic  method  and  the 
critical  attitude  have  their  dangers  in  imaginative 
literature.  In  proportion  as  this  writer's  faculty  of 
minute  observation  and  his  realistic  objectivity 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  273 

have  increased  upon  him,  the  uncomfortable  cold 
ness  which  is  felt  in  his  youthful  work  has  become 
actually  disagreeable,  and  his  art — growing  constant 
ly  finer  and  surer  in  matters  of  detail — has  seemed 
to  dwell  more  and  more  in  the  region  of  mere 
manners  and  less  in  the  higher  realm  of  character 
and  passion.  In  most  of  his  writings  the  heart, 
somehow,  is  left  out.  We  have  seen  that  Irving, 
from  his  knowledge  of  England  and  America,  and 
his  long  residence  in  both  countries,  became  the 
mediator  between  the  two  great  branches  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race.  This  he  did  by  the  power  of 
his  sympathy  with  each.  Henry  James  has  like 
wise  interpreted  the  two  nations  to  one  another  in 
a  subtler  but  less  genial  fashion  than  Irving,  and 
not  through  sympathy,  but  through  contrast,  by 
bringing  into  relief  the  opposing  ideals  of  life  and 
society  which  have  developed  under  different  in 
stitutions.  In  his  novel,  the  American,  1877,  he 
has  shown  the  actual  misery  which  may  result 
from  the  clashing  of  opposed  social  systems.  In 
such  clever  sketches  as  Daisy  Miller,  1879,  the 
Pension  Beaurepas,  and  A  Bundle  of  Letters,  he  has 
exhibited  types  of  the  American  girl,  the  American 
business  man,  the  aesthetic  feebling  from  Boston, 
and  the  Europeanized  or  would-be  denationalized 
American  campaigners  in  the  Old  World,  and  has 
set  forth  the  ludicrous  incongruities,  perplexities, 
and  misunderstandings  which  result  from  contra 
dictory  standards  of  conventional  morality  and 
behavior.  In  the  Europeans,  1879,  and  an  Inter- 
18 


274  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

national  Episode,  1878,  he  has  reversed  the  process, 
bringing  Old  Word  standards  to  the  test  of  Amer 
ican  ideas  by  transferring  his  dramatis  persona  to 
republican  soil.  The  last-named  of  these  illus 
trates  how  slender  a  plot  realism  requires  for  its 
purposes.  It  is  nothing  more  than  the  history  of 
an  English  girl  of  good  family  who  marries  an 
American  gentleman  and  undertakes  to  live  in 
America,  but  finds  herself  so  uncomfortable  in 
strange  social  conditions  that  she  returns  to  En 
gland  for  life,  while,  contrariwise,  the  heroine's 
sister  is  so  taken  with  the  freedom  of  these  very 
conditions  that  she  elopes  with  another  American 
and  "  goes  West."  James  is  a  keen  observer  of  the 
physiognomy  of  cities  as  well  as  of  men,  and  his 
Portraits  of  Places,  1884,  is  among  the  most  de 
lightful  contributions  to  the  literature  of  foreign 
travel. 

Mr.  Howells's  writings  are  not  without  "in 
ternational  "  touches.  In  A  Foregone  Conclusion 
and  the  Lady  of  the  Aroostook,  and  others  of 
his  novels,  the  contrasted  points  of  view  in 
American  and  European  life  are  introduced,  and 
especially  those  variations  in  feeling,  custom, 
dialect,  etc.,  which  make  the  modern  English 
man  and  the  modern  American  such  objects  of 
curiosity  to  each  other,  and  which  have  been 
dwelt  upon  of  late  even  unto  satiety.  But  in 
general  he  finds  his  subjects  at  home,  and  if  he 
does  not  know  his  own  countrymen  and  country 
women  more  intimately  than  Mr.  James,  at  least 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  275 

he  loves  them  better.  There  is  a  warmer  senti 
ment  in  his  fictions,  too;  his  men  are  better  fel 
lows  and  his  women  are  more  lovable.  Howells 
was  born  in  Ohio.  His  early  life  was  that  of  a 
western  country  editor.  In  1860  he  published, 
jointly  with  his  friend  Piatt,  a  book  of  verse — 
Poems  of  Two  Friends.  In  1861  he  was  sent  as 
consul  to  Venice,  and  the  literary  results  of  his 
sojourn  there  appeared  in  his  sketches  Venetian 
Life,  1865,  and  Italian  Journeys,  1867.  In  1871 
he  became  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  in 
the  same  year  published  his  Suburban  Sketches. 
All  of  these  early  volumes  showed  a  quick  eye  for 
the  picturesque,  an  unusual  power  of  description, 
and  humor  of  the  most  delicate  quality;  but  as  yet 
there  was  little  approach  to  narrative.  Their 
Wedding  Journey  was  a  revelation  to  the  public  of 
the  interest  that  may  lie  in  an  ordinary  bridal  trip 
across  the  State  of  New  York,  when  a  close  and 
sympathetic  observation  is  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  characteristics  of  American  life  as  it  appears 
at  railway  stations  and  hotels,  on  steam-boats  and 
in  the  streets  of  very  commonplace  towns.  A 
Chance  Acquaintance,  1873,  was  Howells's  first  novel, 
though  even  yet  the  story  was  set  against  a  back 
ground  of  travel — pictures,  a  holiday  trip  on  the 
St.  Lawrence  and  the  Saguenay ;  and  descriptions 
of  Quebec  and  the  Falls  of  Montmorenci,  etc., 
rather  predominated  over  the  narrative.  Thus, 
gradually  and  by  a  natural  process,  complete  charac 
ters  and  realistic  novels,  such  as  A  Modern  In- 


276  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

stance,  1882,  and  Indian  Summer,  evolved  them 
selves  from  truthful  sketches  of  places  and  persons 
seen  by  the  way. 

The  incompatibility  existing  between  European 
and  American  views  of  life,  which  makes  the 
comedy  or  the  tragedy  of  Henry  James's  interna 
tional  fictions,  is  replaced  in  Howells's  novels  by 
the  repulsion  between  differing  social  grades  in 
the  same  country.  The  adjustment  of  these  sub 
tle  distinctions  forms  a  part  of  the  problem  of  life 
in  all  complicated  societies.  Thus  in  A  Chance 
Acquaintance  the  heroine  is  a  bright  and  pretty 
Western  girl,  who  becomes  engaged  during  a  pleas 
ure  tour  to  an  irreproachable  but  offensively  priggish 
young  gentleman  from  Boston,  and  the  engage 
ment  is  broken  by  her  in  consequence  of  an  unin 
tended  slight — the  betrayal  on  the  hero's  part  of  a 
shade  of  mortification  when  he  and  his  betrothed 
are  suddenly  brought  into  the  presence  of  some 
fashionable  ladies  belonging  to  his  own  monde. 
The  little  comedy,  Out  of  the  Question,  deals  with 
this  same  adjustment  of  social  scales;  and  in  many 
of  Howells's  other  novels,  such  as  Silas  Lapham 
and  the  Lady  of  the  Aroostook,  one  of  the  main 
motives  may  be  described  to  be  the  contact  of  the 
man  who  eats  with  his  fork  witli  the  man  who  eats 
with  his  knife,  and  the  shock  thereby  ensuing.  In 
Indian  Summer  the  complications  arise  from  the 
difference  in  age  between  the  hero  and  heroine, 
and  not  from  a  difference  in  station  or  social  an 
tecedents.  In  all  of  these  fictions  the  misunder- 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  277 

standings  come  from  an  incompatibility  of  manners 
rather  than  of  character,  and,  if  any  thing  were  to 
be  objected  to  the  probability  of  the  story,  it  is 
that  the  climax  hinges  on  delicacies  and  subtleties 
which,  in  real  life,  when  there  is  opportunity  for 
explanations,  are  readily  brushed  aside.  But  in 
A  Modern  Instance  Howells  touched  the  deeper 
springs  of  action.  In  this,  his  strongest  work,  the 
catastrophe  is  brought  about,  as  in  George  Eliot's 
great  novels,  by  the  reaction  of  characters  upon 
one  another,  and  the  story  is  realistic  in  a  higher 
sense  than  any  mere  study  of  manners  can  be. 
His  nearest  approach  to  romance  is  in  the  Undis 
covered  Country,  1880,  which  deals  with  the  Spirit 
ualists  and  the  Shakers,  and  in  its  study  of  prob 
lems  that  hover  on  the  borders  of  the  supernatural, 
in  its  out-of-the-way  personages  and  adventures, 
and  in  a  certain  ideal  poetic  flavor  about  the 
whole  book,  has  a  strong  resemblance  to  Haw 
thorne,  especially  to  Hawthorne  in  the  Blithedale 
Romance,  where  he  comes  closer  to  common  ground 
with  other  romancers.  It  is  interesting  to  compare 
the  Undiscovered  Country  with  Henry  James's  Bosto- 
nians,  the  latest  and  one  of  the  cleverest  of  his 
fictions,  which  is  likewise  a  study  of  the  clairvoy 
ants,  mediums,  woman's  rights'  advocates,  and  all 
varieties  of  cranks,  reformers,  and  patrons  of 
"causes,"  for  whom  Boston  has  long  been  noto 
rious.  A  most  unlovely  race  of  people  they  be 
come  under  the  cold  scrutiny  of  Mr.  James's  cos 
mopolitan  eyes,  which  see  more  clearly  the  char- 


278  AMERICAN  LITERATURE. 

latanism,  narrow-mindedness,  mistaken  fanaticism, 
morbid  self-consciousness,  disagreeable  nervous 
intensity,  and  vulgar  or  ridiculous  outside  pe 
culiarities  of  the  humanitarians,  than  the  no 
bility  and  moral  enthusiasm  which  underlie  the 
surface. 

Howells  is  almost  the  only  successful  American 
dramatist,  and  this  in  the  field  of  parlor  comedy. 
His  little  farces,  the  Elevator,  the  Register,  the  Par 
lor  Car,  etc.,  have  a  lightness  and  grace,  with  an  ex 
quisitely  absurd  situation,  which  remind  us  more  of 
the  Comedies  et  Proverbes  of  Alfred  de  Musset,  or  the 
many  agreeable  dialogues  and  monologues  of  the 
French  domestic'stage,  than  of  any  work  of  English 
or  American  hands.  His  softly  ironical  yet  affec 
tionate  treatment  of  feminine  ways  is  especially 
admirable.  In  his  numerous  types  of  sweetly 
illogical,  inconsistent,  and  inconsequent  woman 
hood  he  has  perpetuated  with  a  nicer  art  than 
Dickens  what  Thackeray  calls  "  that  great  discov 
ery,"  Mrs.  Nickleby. 

1.  Theodore  Winthrop.     Life  in  the  Open  Air. 
Cecil  Dreeme. 

2.  Thomas  Wentworth   Higginson.      Life  in  a 
Black  Regiment. 

3.  Poetry  of  the  Civil  War.     Edited  by  Richard 
Grant  White.     New  York  :  1866. 

4.  Charles  Farrar  Browne.      Artemus  Ward  — 
His  Book.     Lecture  on  the  Mormons.     Artemus 
Ward  in  London. 


LITERATURE  SINCE  1861.  .  279 

5.  Samuel  Langhorne  Clemens.     The  Jumping 
Frog.     Roughing  It.     The  Mississippi  Pilot. 

6.  Charles  Godfrey  I, eland.     Hans  Breitmann's 
Ballads. 

7.  Edward  Everett  Hale.     If,  Yes,  and  Perhaps. 
His  Level  Best  and  Other  Stories. 

8.  Francis  Bret  Harte.     Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat 
and  Other  Stories.      Condensed  Novels.      Poems 
in  Dialect. 

9.  Sidney    Lanier.       Nirvana.       Resurrection. 
The  Harlequin  of  Dreams.     Song  of  the  Chatta- 
hoochie.     The  Mocking  Bird.     The  Stirrup-Cup. 
Tampa  Robins.     The  Bee.     The  Revenge  of  Ha- 
mish.     The  Ship  of  Earth.    The  Marshes  of  Glynn. 
Sunrise. 

10.  Henry  James,   Jr.      A   Passionate  Pilgrim. 
Roderick  Hudson.     Daisy  Miller.     Pension  Beau- 
repas.      A  Bundle  of  Letters.      An  International 
Episode.     The  Bostonians.     Portraits  of  Places. 

11.  William   Dean    Howells.       Their  Wedding 
Journey.      Suburban    Sketches.      A  Chance   Ac 
quaintance.     A  Foregone  Conclusion.     The  Un 
discovered  Country      A  Modern  Instance. 

12.  George  W.  Cable.     Old  Creole  Days.     Mad 
am  Delphine.     The  Grandissimes. 

13.  Joel  Chandler  Harris.    Uncle  Remus.     Min- 
go  and  Other  Sketches. 

14.  Charles  Egbert  Craddock  (Miss   Murfree). 
In  the  Tennessee  Mountains. 


280  .      AMERICAN  LITERATURE — INDEX. 


INDEX. 


An  Index  to  the  American  Authors  and  Writings,  and  the  Principal 
American  Periodicals  mentioned  in  this  Volume. 


Abraham  Lincoln,  188. 

Adams  and  Liberty,  74. 

Adams,  J.  Q.,  02,  109. 

Adams,  Samuel,  52-54. 

After-Dinner  Poem,  177. 

After  the  Funeral,  187. 

Age  of  Reason,  the,  64-66,  75. 

Ages,  the,  201. 

Alcott,  A.  B.,  135,  136. 

Aldrich  T.  B.,  260. 

Algerine  Captive,  the,  79. 

Algic  Researches,  171. 

Alhambra,  the,  94. 

All  Quiet  Along  the  Potomac,  242. 

Alnwick  Castle,  103. 

^Esop,  Richard,  68,  69. 

American,  the,  272,  273. 

American  Civil  War,  the,  241. 

American  Conflict,  the,  241. 

American  Flag,  the,  102. 

American  Note-Books,  123, 149,  151, 

155,  168. 

American  Scholar,  the,  120, 135, 160. 
Ames,  Fisher,  62,  63. 
Among  My  Books,  188. 
Anarchiad,  the.  69. 
Annabel  Lee,  217. 
Army  Life  in  a  Black  Regiment,  245. 
Army  of  the  Potomac,  the,  241. 
Art  of  Book  Making,  the,  99. 
"Artemus  Ward,"  248,  251-56. 
Arthur  Mervyn,  80. 
At  Teague  Poteet's,  268. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  the,  178,187,197- 

199,  244,  245,  257,  a6i,  275. 
Atlantis,  222. 
Auf  Wiederschen,  187. 
Autobiography,  Franklin's,  33,  46, 

48,  49. 
Autocrat   of  the   Breakfast   Table, 

the,  173,  179. 


Backwoodsman,  the,  91. 

Ballad  of  the  Oysterman,  174. 

Bancroft,  George,  161,  181,  190,  191. 

Barbara  Frietchie,  207. 

Barlow,  Joel,  68-71. 

Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic,  242. 

Battle  of  the  Kegs,  74. 

Battlefield,  the,  203. 

Bay  Fight,  the,  243. 

Bay  Psalm  Book,  the,  33. 

Bedouin  Song,  226. 

Beecher,  Lyman,  127,  231. 

Beecher,  H.  W.,  231. 

Beers,  Mrs.  E.  L.,"242. 

Beleaguered  City,  the,  165,  160. 

Belfry  of  Bruges,  the,  165,  167. 

Berkeley,  Robert,  18. 

Biglow  Papers,  the,   182.    183,  185, 

186,  209,  248. 
Black  Cat,  the,  218. 
Black  Fox  of  Salmon  River,  the,  206. 
Blair,  Jas.,  13. 
Blithedale  Romance,  the,  123,  154, 

227,  277. 

Bloody  Tenet  of  Persecution,  the,  25. 
Blue  and  the  Gray,  the,  243. 
Boker,  G.  H.,26o. 
Bostonians,  the,  277. 
Bracubridge  Hall,  96,  98,  247. 
Bradford's  Journal,  24,  28. 
Brahma,  136,  141. 
Brainard,  j.  G.  C.,  205,  206,  230. 
Brick  Moon,  the,  259. 
Bridal  of  Pennacook,  the,  206,  209. 
Bridge,  the,  167,  168. 
Broken  Heart,  the,  09. 
Brown,  C.  B.,  70-82. 
Browne,  C.  F.%  250,  251. 
Brownell,  H.  H.,  242-44. 
Bryant,  W.  C.,  86,  102, 163, 199-204. 
Buccaneer,  the,  115, 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE — INDEX.         281 


Building  of  the  Ship,  the,  167. 
Bundle  of  Letters,  A,  273. 
Burnett,  Mrs.  F.  H.,  271. 
Bushnell,  Horace,  128. 
Busy-Body,  the,  45,  66. 
Butler,  W.  A.,  224. 
Byrd,  Wm.,  17. 

Cable,  G.  W.,  268. 

Calhoun,  J.  CM  56,  no,  in. 

Cambridge  Thirty  Years  Ago,  161. 

Cape  Cod,  144. 

Capture  of  Fugitive  Slaves,  184. 

Gary,  Alice,  228. 

Gary,  Phoebe,  228. 

Cask  of  Amontillado,  the,  218. 

Cassandra  Southwick,  209. 

Cathedral,  the,  189. 

Cecil  Dreeme,  245. 

Century  Magazine,  the,  107,241,261. 

Chambered  Nautilus,  the,  176. 

Chance  Acquaintance,  A,  275,  276. 

Channing,  W.  E.,  115-18,  120,  126, 

130.  138. 

Channing,  W.  E.,  Jr.,  138,  156. 
Channing,  W.  H.,  138. 
Chapel  of  the  Hermits,  the,  208. 
Character  of  Milton,  the,  117. 
Charleston,  243. 
Children  of  Adam,  233. 
Choate,  Rufus,  114,  115. 
Christian  Examiner,  the,  117. 
Circular  Letter,  by  Otis  &  Quincy  ,55. 
City  in  the  Sea,  the,  214. 
Clara  Howard,  80. 
Clarke,  J.  F.,  138. 
Clay,  Henry,  no,  in. 
Clemens,  S.  L.,  250,  255-57. 
Columbiad,  the,  70,  71. 
Common  Sense,  63. 
Condensed  Novels,  264. 
Conduct  of  Life,  the,  139. 
Confederate  States  of  America,  the, 

241. 

Conquest  of  Canaan,  72,  100. 
Conquest  of  Granada,  94. 
Conquest  of  Mexico,  190. 
Conquest  of  Peru,  190. 
Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  the,  199. 
Constitution  and  the  Union,  the,  112. 
Constitution  of  the  United  States, 

the,  55,  59. 
Contentment,  109. 
Contrast,  the,  79. 
Conversations  on  the  Gospels,  135. 
Conversations  on  Some  of  the  Old 

Poets,  187. 
Cooke,  J.  E.,  23J. 


Cooper,  J.  F.,  77,  91, 104-8, 114, 171, 

Coral  Grove,  the,  230. 

Cotton,  John,  25,  32. 

Count  Frontenac  &  New  France, 193. 

Courtin',  the,  185,  248. 

Courtship  of  Miles  Standish,  the,  30. 

Cow  Chase,  the,  73. 

Cranch,  C.  P.,  123,  138. 

risis,  the,  63. 
Croaker  Papers,  the,  103. 
Culprit  Fay,  the,  102. 
Curtis,  G.  W.,  123,  260. 

Daisy  Miller,  272,  273. 

Dana,  C.  A.,  122,  138,  199. 

Dana,  R.  H.,  86,  115. 

Danbury  News  Man,  74,  250. 

Dante,  Longfellow's,  172. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  241. 

Day  of  Doom,  the,  40. 

Death  of  the  Flowers,  the,  zoi,  202. 

Declaration  of  Independence,the,55. 

Deerslayer,  the,  106,  108. 

Democratic  Vistas,  236. 

Derby,  G.  H.,  250. 

Descent  into  the  Maelstrom,  219. 

Deserted  Road,  the,  228. 

Dial,  the,  120,  127,  136,  138. 

Dialogue  Between  Franklin  and  the 
Gout,  48. 

Diamond  Lens,  the,  245. 

Discourse  of  the  Plantation  of  Vir 
ginia,  A,  ii. 

Dolph  Heyliger,  96. 

Domain  of  Arnheim,  the,  219. 

Dorchester  Giant,  the.  173. 

Drake,  J.  R.,  102,  103,  115. 

Draper,  J.  W.,  241. 

Dream  Life,  231. 

Dresser,  the  Wound,  235. 

Drifting,  228. 

Driving  Home  the  Cows,  242, 

Drum  Taps,  236. 

Dutchman's  Fireside,  the,  102. 

Dwight,  J.  S.,  125,  130,  138. 

Dwight,  Theodore,  68,  69. 

Dwight,  Timothy,  68,  72. 

Early  Spring  in  Massachusetts,  144. 

Echo,  the,  69. 

Echo  Club,  the,  226. 

Edgar  Huntley,  80. 

Edith  Linsey,  22-?. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  41-44,  72,  126, 

128. 

Eggleston,  Edward,  267. 
Elevator,  the,  278. 


282 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE — INDEX. 


I-  Hot.  John,  23. 

Elsie  Venner,  180. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  113,  120,  121,  125, 
147,  156,  160,  169,  208,  235. 

Endicott's  Red  Cross,  153. 

English  Note  Books,  155. 

English  Traits,  134,  142. 

Ephemerae.  231. 

Epilogue  to  Cato,  76. 

Eternal  Goodness,  208. 

Kthan  Brand,  152. 

Evangeline,  169,  170. 

Evening  Wind,  the,  201. 

Everett,  Edward,  114,  115,  181. 

Europeans,  the,  272,  273. 

Excelsior,  166. 

Excursions,  144. 

Expediency  of  the  Federal  Consti 
tution,  59. 

Eyes  and  Ears,  231. 

F.  Smith,  223. 

Fable  for  Critics,  A,  117,  187,  189. 

Facts  in  the  Case  of  M.  Valdemar, 
the,  215. 

Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher,  the,  218. 

Familists'  Hymn,  the,  29. 

Fanshawe,  151. 

Farewell  Address,  Washington's,  60. 

Faust,  Taylor's,  226. 

Federalist,  the,  60. 

Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  161,  190. 

Final  Judgment,  the,  42. 

Finch,  F.  M.,  243. 

Fire  of  Driftwood,  the,  167. 

Fireside  Travels,  161. 

Fitz  Adam's  Story,  185. 

Flint,  Timothy,  91. 

Flood  of  Years,  the,  203. 

Footpath,  the,  187. 

Footsteps  of  Angels,  165. 

Foregone  Conclusion,  A,  274. 

Forest  Hymn,  200. 

Fortune  of  the  Republic,  139,  140. 

Foster,  S.  C.,  228,  229. 

France  and  England  in  North  Amer 
ica,  192. 

Franklin,  Ben.,  33,  44-49,  66. 

Freedom  of  the  Will,  42. 

French  Poets  and  Novelists,  272. 

Freneau,  Philip,  76,  77. 

Fuller,  Margaret,  121-23,  I28,  130, 
J35-38i  '42,  156,  171- 

Galaxy  Magazine,  the,  261. 
Garrison,W.  L..IIO,  112, 193,205,229. 
Garrison  of  Cape  Ann,  the,  38. 
General  History  of  Virginia,  15. 


Geography  of  the  Mississippi  Val 

ley,  01.^ 

Georgia  Spec,  the,  79. 
Ghost  Ball  at  Congress  Hall,the,223. 
Give  Me  the  Old.  224. 
Godey's  Lady's  Book,  197,  210. 
Godfrey,  Thos.,  79. 
Gold  Bug,  the,  215. 
Golden  Legend,  the,  171. 
Good  News  from  Virginia,  19. 
Good  Word  for  Winter,  A,  t88. 
Goodrich,  S.  G.,  88,  92,  151. 
Grandfather's  Chair,  38. 
Grandissimes,  the,  268. 
Greeley,  Horace,  123,  225. 
Green  River,  201. 
Greene,  A.  G.,  109. 
Greenfield  Hill,  72. 
Guardian  Angel,  the,  180. 

Hail,  Columbia!  74. 

Hale,  E.  E.,  160,  215,  257-60. 

Halleck,  F.  G.,  103,  104,  115. 

Halpine,  C.  G.,  245. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  59-61,  63,  112. 

Hannah  Thurston,  227. 

Hans  Breitmann  Ballads,  267. 

Hans  Pfaall,  215. 

Harbinger,  the,  122,  123. 

Harper  s  Monthly  Magazine,  197, 
198,  260,  261. 

Harris,  J.  C.,  268. 

Harte,  F.  B.,  255,  261,  263-66. 

Hasty  Pudding,  71. 

Haunted  Palace,  the,  217. 

Hawthorne,  Julian,  154. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  7,  29,  38,  70, 
123,  137,  149-156,  168,  181,  227, 
240,  247,  248,  269,  272,  277. 


Hay,  John,  266. 
Health, 


A,  109. 

Heathen  Chinee,  the,  264. 
Hedge,  F.  H.,  123. 
Height  of  the  Ridiculous,  the,  173. 
Henry,  Patrick,  52-54,  59. 
Hiawatha,  77,  170. 
Higginson,  T.  W.,  95,  123,  137,  245. 
His  Level  Best.  258. 
History  of  the  Dividing  Line,  17. 
History    of    New    England,    Win- 

throp's,  28-32. 
History    of    Plymouth    Plantation, 

Bradford's,  28. 
History  of  the  United  Netherlands, 

191. 
History  of  the  United  States,  Ban 

croft's,  161,    191:    Higginson's, 

95- 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE — INDEX. 


28- 


History  of  Virginia,  Berkeley's,  18  : 

Stith's,  18. 
Hoffman,  C.  F.,  224. 
Holland,  J.  G.,  261. 
Holmes.  O.  W.,  109,  160,  161,  172- 

l8l,   202,   245,   247,    248. 

Home,  Sweet  Home,  108. 
Homesick  in  Heaven,  176. 
Hooker,  Thos.,  32,  35,  128. 
Hoosier  Schoolmaster,  the,  267. 
Hopkins,  Lemuel,  68,  69. 
Hopkinson,  Francis,  74. 
Hopkinson,  Joseph,  74. 
Horse-Shoe  Robinson,  221. 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  the,  150, 

How'e^Mrs.  J.  W.,  242. 
Howells,  W.  D.,  269-271,  274-78. 
Humphreys,  David,  68,  69. 
Hymn  at  the  Completion  of  Concord 

Monument,  143. 

Hymn  of  the  Moravian  Nuns,  163. 
Hymn  to  the  Night,  165. 
Hymn  to  the  North  Star,  200. 
Hyperion,  172. 

Ichabod, 207. 

If,  Yes,  and  Perhaps,  258. 

Iliad,  Bryant's,  204. 

Illustrious  Providences,  34. 

In  the  Tennessee  Mountains,  268. 

In  the  Twilight,  187. 

In  War  Time,  207. 

Independent,  the,  231. 

Indian  Bible,  Eliot's,  23. 

Indian  Burying  Ground,  the,  76,  77. 

Indian  Student,  the,  76. 

Indian  Summer,  276. 

Ingham  Papers,  258. 

Inklings  of  Adventure,  223. 

Innocents  Abroad,  255,  256. 

International  Episode,  An,  272,  273. 

Irving,  Washington,  86,  91,  92,  93- 

101,  201,  247,  248,  257  273. 
Israfel,  214. 
Italian  Journeys,  275. 
Italian  Note-Books,  155. 


ames,  Henry,  245,  269-74,  276,  277. 

ane  Talbot,  80. 

ay,  John,  60,  61. 

eflferson,  Thos.,  14,  55-59,62. 

esuits  in  North  America,  the,  193. 

im,  265. 

im  Bludso,  266. 

ohn  Brown's  Body,  73,  242. 

ohn  Godfrey's  Fortune,  227. 

ohn  Phoenix,  250. 


_  ohn  Underbill,  29. 

Jonathan  to  John,  185. 

"  Josh  Billings,"  255. 

Journey  to  the  Land  of  Eden,  A,  17. 

Judd,  Sylvester,  189. 

Jumping  Frog,  the,  255. 

June,  201,  202. 

Justice  and  Expediency,  206. 

Kansas  and  Nebraska  Bill,  the,  195. 

Katie,  243. 

Kennedy,  J.  P.,  221. 

Key,  F.  S.,  75. 

Kidd,  the  Pirate,  96. 

King's  Missive,  the,  209. 

Knickerbocker   Magazine,   the,  96, 

101,  151,  192,  210. 
Knickerbocker's    History   of    New 

York,  86,  96,  97,  247. 

Lady  of  the  Aroostook,  the,  274, 276. 

Lamer,  Sidney,  267. 

La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the 

Great  West,  193. 
Last  Leaf,  the,  109,  174. 
Last  of  the  Mohicans,  the,  106,  108. 
Last  of  the  Valerii,  the,  272. 
Latest  Form  of  Infidelity,  the,  128. 
Laus  Deo,  207. 

Leatherstocking  Tales,  77,  to6,  107. 
Leaves  of  Grass,  232,  233,  236. 
Lecture  on  the  Mormons,  252. 
Legend  of  Brittany,  182. 
Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  96,  98. 
Legends  of  New  England,  206. 
Legends  of  the  Province  House,  153. 
Leland,  C.  G.,  267. 
Letter  on  Whitewashing,  74. 
Letters  and  Social  Aims,  139. 
Letters  from  Under  a  Bridge,  223. 
Letters  of  a  Traveler,  204. 
Liberator,  the,  no,  193,  229. 
Life  of  Columbus,  94,  ico. 
Life  of  Goldsmith,  100. 
Life  of  John  of  Barneveld,  192. 
Life  of  Washington,  100. 
Ligeia,  218. 

Light  of  Stars,  the,  165. 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  188,  245-47,  249- 
Lines  on  Leaving  Europe,  223. 
Lippincott's  Magazine,  261. 
Literary  Recreations,  210. 
Literati  of  New  York,  211. 
Little  Breeches,  265. 
Livingston,  Wm.,  66. 
^ongfellow,  H.  W.,  29,  77,  149,  160- 

172, 183,  198,  231.  4. 

Lost  Arts,  iQ4. 


284 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE — INDEX. 


Lost  Cause,  the,  241. 

I  Lowell,  J.  R.,  124,  135,  137,  139,  160. 
161, 168, 181-189, 199, 202,247,248 
Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,  the,  263. 
Lunatic's  Skate,  the,  223. 
Lyrics  of  a  Day,  243. 
MacFingal,  67,  68,  74. 
Madonna  of  the  Future,  the,  272. 
Magnaha,   Christi    Americana,   20, 

Mahomet  and  his  Successors,  100. 

Maine  Woods,  the,  144. 

"  Major  Jack  Downing,"  250. 

Man  of  the  Crowd,  the,  218. 

Man-of-War  Bird,  the,  236. 

Man  Without  a  Country,  the,  215, 

257. 

Marble  Faun,  the,  150, 152,  154, 155. 
Marco  Bozzaris,  103. 
Margaret,  189. 
Mark  Twain,  248,  255-57. 
Maryland,  My  Maryland,  242. 
Masque  of  the  Gods,  the,  225. 
Masque  of  the  Red  Death,  218. 
Mather,  Cotton,  20,  23,  24,  26,  30, 

33-38,  40. 

Mather,  Increase.  34. 
Maud  Muller,  208. 
May  Day,  139. 

Maypole  of  Merrymqunt,  the,  29. 
Memoranda  of  the  Civil  War,  236. 
Memorial  History  of  Boston,  209. 
Men  Naturally  God's  Enemies,  42. 
Merry  Mount,  190. 
Messenger,  R.  H.,  224. 
Miggles,  264. 
41  Miles  O'Reilly,"  245. 
Minister's  Black  Veil,  the,  153. 
Minister's  Wooing,  the,  230. 
Mitchell,  D.  G.,  230,  231. 
Mocking  Bird,  the,  268. 
Modern  Instance,  A,  275,  277. 
Modern  Learning,  74. 
Modest  Request,  A,  175. 
Money  Diggers,  the,  96. 
Montcalm  and  Wolfe,  193. 
Monterey,  224. 
Moore,  C.  C.,  224. 
Moore,  Frank,  241. 
Moral  Argument  Against  Calvinism, 

the,  117. 

Morris,  G.  P.,  223. 
Morton's  Hope,  too. 
Mosses  from  an  Old  Manse,  149, 153. 
Motley,  J.  L.,  160,  190-92. 
Mount  Vernon,  70. 
u  Mrs.  Partington,"  250. 


MS.  Found  in  a  Bottle,  221. 

Murder  of  Lovejoy,  the,  160. 

Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,  the,  215. 

Music  Grinders,  the,  174. 

My  Aunt,  174. 

My  Captain,  237. 

My  Double  and  How  He  Undid  Me, 

My  Garden  Acquaintance,  188. 
My  Life  is  Like  the  Summer  Rose, 

108. 

My  Study  Windows,  188. 
My  Wife  and  I,  230. 
Mystery  of  Gilgal,  the,  266. 
Mystery  of  Marie  Roget,  the,  215. 

Narrative  of  A.  Gordon  Pym,  the, 

219. 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne  and  His  Wife, 

r     I54' 
Nature,  120,  131,  134. 

Naval  History  of  the  United  States, 

104. 

Nearer  Home,  228. 
Negro  Melodies,  228. 
New  England  Tragedies,  29. 
New  England  Two  Centuries  Ago, 

188. 
New  System  of  English  Grammar, 

A,  250. 
New  York  Evening  Post,  the,  200, 

204. 

New  York  Tribune,  the,  122,  136. 
Newell,  R.  H.,  255. 
North  American  Review,  the,  114, 

115,  151,  162,  187,  199,  200. 
Norton,  Andrews,  128. 
Notes  on  Virginia,  58. 
Nothing  to  Wear,  224. 
Nux  Postccenatica,  175. 
Nye,  Bill,  255. 

O'Brien,  F.  J.,  245. 

Observations  on  the  Boston  Port 
Bill,  55. 

Occulation  of  Orion,  the,  167,  183. 

Ode  at  the  Harvard  Commemora 
tion,  187. 

Ode  for  a  Social  Meeting,  175. 

Ode  to  Freedom,  184. 

Odyssey,  Bryant's,  204. 

Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs,  the,  167. 

Old  Creole  Days,  268. 

Old  Grimes,  109. 

Old  Ironsides,  173. 

Old  Oaken  Bucket,  the,  108. 

Old  Pennsylvania  Farmer,  the,  225. 

Old  Regime  in  Canada,  the,  193. 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE — INDEX. 


Old  Sergeant,  the,  242. 
On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  For 
eigners,  185. 

One  Hoss  Shay,  the,  176,  248. 
Oregon  Trail,  the,  192. 
Ormond,  80,  81. 
"  Orpheus  C.  Kerr,"  255. 
Orphic  Sayings,  136. 
Osgood,  Mrs.  K.  P.,  242. 
Otis,  James,  52-55. 
Our  Master,  208. 
Our  Old  Home,  155. 
Out  of  the  Question,  276. 
Outcasts  of  Poker  Flat,  the,  264,  265. 
Outre  Mer,  163. 
Overland  Monthly,  the,  963. 
Over-Soul,  the,  136. 

Paine,  R.  T.,  75. 

Paine,  Tom,  63,  66. 

Panorama,  the.  207. 

Paper,  48. 

Parker,  Theodore,  126, 127, 129, 130, 

138. 

Parkman,  Francis,  161,  100-03. 
Parlor  Car,  the,  278. 
Partisan,  the,  222. 
Passionate  Pilgrim,  A,  272. 
Pathfinder,  the,  106. 
Paulding,  J.  K.,  91,  95,  101. 
Payne,  J.  H.,  108. 
Pearl  of  Orr's  Island,  the,  230. 
Pencillings  by  the  Way,  222. 
Pension  Beaurepas,  the,  273. 
Percival,  J.  G.,  230. 
Percy,  Geo.,  n. 
"  Peter  Parley,"  88. 
"  Petroleum  V.  Nasby,*'  255. 
Phenomena  Quaedam  Apocalyptica, 

Phillips,  Wendell,  160,  193,  194. 

Philosophic  Solitude,  66. 

Philosophy  of  Composition,  214. 

Phcenixiana,  250. 

Piatt,  J.  J    242,  267,  275. 

Pictures  of  Memory,  228. 

Pilot,  the,  107. 

Pink  and  White  Tyranny,  230. 

Pinkney,  E.  C.,  109. 

Pioneer,  the,  181. 

Pioneers,  the,  01,  106. 

Pioneers    of   France    in    the    New 

World,  193. 
Plain  Language fromTruthful  James 

264. 

Planting  of  the  Apple-Tree,  the,  203. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  109,  138,  151,  181,  20*, 

2IO,  212-221,  228,  240,  259. 


Poems  of  the  Orient,  225. 

Poems  of  Two  Friends,  275. 

Poems  on  Slavery,  168. 

Poet  at  the  Breakfast  Table,  the,  179. 

Poetic  Principle,  the,  216. 

Poetry  :  A  Metrical  Essay,  174. 

Poet's  Hope,  A,  138. 

Political  Green  House,  the,  69. 

Pollard,  E.  A,  241. 

Pons  Maximus,  227. 

Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  48. 

Portraits  of  Places,  274. 

Prairie,  the,  106. 

Prentice,  G.  D.,  205.  250. 

Prescott,  W.  H.,  161,  190,  192,  240. 

Present  Crisis,  the,  184. 

Pride  of  the  Village,  the,  79. 

Prince  Deukalion,  225. 

Prince  of  Parthia,  the,  79. 

Problem,  the,  143. 

Professor  at   the  Breakfast  Table, 

the,  179. 

Progress  to  the  Mines,  A,  17. 
Prologue,  the,  176. 
Prophecy  of  Samuel  Sewall,  the,  39. 
Prophet,  the,  225. 
Purloined  Letter,  the,  215.        » 
Putnam's  Monthly,  161,  260. 

Quaker  Widow,  the,  225. 
Quincy,  Josiah,  52-55. 

Rag  Man  and  Rag  Woman,  the,  259. 

Randall,  J.  R.,  242. 

Randolph,  John,  57. 

Raven,  the,  214,  215,  217. 

Read,  T.  B.,  227,  228. 

Reaper  and  the  Flowers,  the,  165. 

Rebellion  Record,  the,  241. 

Recollections  of  a  Lifetime,  88,  92. 

Red  Rover,  the,  107. 

Register,  the,  278. 

Remarks  on  Associations,  117. 

Remarks    on   National   Literature, 

118,  130. 

Representative  Men,  133, 139,  142. 
Resignation,  167. 
Reveries  of  a  Bachelor,  230. 
Rhcecus,  182. 
Rhymes  of  Travel,  225. 
Riding  to  Vote,  242. 
Rights  of  the  British  Colonies,  55. 
Ripley,  George,  122,  129,  130,  138, 

Rip  Van  Winkle,  06. 
Rip  Van  Winkle,  M.D.,  175. 
Rise  and   Fall  of  the  Confederate 
States,  241. 


286 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE — INDEX. 


Rise  and  Fall  of  the  SlavePower,24i. 
Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  191. 
Rob  of  the  Bowl,  221. 
Roderick  Hudson,  272. 
Roughing  It,  255,  256. 

Salmagundi,  94,  101,  203. 

Sandys,  George,  16. 

San  Francisco,  261. 

Scarlet  Letter,  the,  29,  152-154. 

School  Days,  205. 

Schoolcraft,  H.  R.,  171. 

Science  of  English  Verse,  267. 

Scribner's  Monthly,  261. 

Scripture  Poems,  222. 

Seaside  and  Fireside,  165,  167. 

Seaweed,  167,  169. 

Selling  of  Joseph,  the,  39. 

September  Gale,  the,  174. 

Sewall,  J.  M.,j6. 

Sewall,  Samuel,  58,  39. 

Rhakspere  Ode,  115. 

Shaw,  H.  W.,  255. 

Shepherd  of  King  Admetus,  the,  182. 

Sheridan's  Ride,  228. 

Shillaber,  B.  P.,  250. 

Sigourney,  Mrs.  L.  H.,  230. 

Silas  Lapham,  276. 

Simms,  W.  G.,22i. 

Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam,  the,  21. 

Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry 

God,  43. 

Skeleton  in  Armor,  the,  166. 
Skeleton  in  the  Closet,  the,  259. 
Sketch  Book,  the,  95,  96,  98. 
Skipper  Ireson's  Ride,  208. 
Sleeper,  the,  218. 
Smith,  Elihu,  68. 
Smith,  John,  9,  u,  15,  16. 
Smith,  Seba,  250. 
Snow- Bound,  208. 
Society  and  Solitude,  139. 
Song  of  the  Chattahoochie,  268. 
Song  for  a  Temperance  Dinner,  175. 
Southern   Literary  Messenger,  the, 

2IO,  212. 

Southern    Passages    and    Pictures, 

222.  ' 

Sparkling  and  Bright,  224, 
Specimens  of  Foreign  Standard  Lit 
erature.  130. 
Specimen  Days,  236. 
Sphinx,  the,  177. 
Sprague,  Charles,  115. 
Spring,  223. 
Spy,  the,  106. 
Squibob  Papers,  250. 
Star  Papers,  231. 


Star  Spangled  Banner,  the,  75. 

Stedman,  E.  C.,  260. 

Stephens,  A.  H.,  241. 

Stith,  William,  18. 

Stoddard,  R.  H.,  260. 

Story  of  Kennett,  the,  227. 

Stowe,  Mrs.  H.  B.,  229,  230. 

Strachey,  William,  9. 

Stuart,  Moses,  127. 

Sumner,  Charles,  160,  162,  168,  186, 

193-95. 
Supernaturalism  in  New  England, 

2IO. 

Swallow  Barn,  221. 

Sybaris  and  Other  Homes,  258. 

Tales  of  the  Glauber  Spa,  203. 

Tales  of  the  Grotesque  and  Ara 
besque,  218. 

Tales  of  a  Traveler,  95. 

Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,  209. 

Tamerlane,  212. 

Tanglewood  Tales,  155. 

Taylor,  Bayard,  224-27. 

Telling  the  Bees,  208. 

Ten  Times  One  is  Ten,  258. 

Tennessee's  Partner,  264,  265. 

Tent  on  the  Beach,  the,  209. 

Thanatopsis,  86,  102,  163,  200,  201, 
203. 

The  Boys,  175. 

Theology,  Dwight's,  72. 

Their  Wedding  Journey,  275. 

Thirty  Poems.  203. 

Thoreau,  H.  D.,  121,  124,  138,  142^ 
148,  156,  160,  235,  240. 

Timrod,  Henry,  242,  243. 

To  Helen,  214. 

To  M from  Abroad,  223. 

To  One  in  Paradise,  217. 

To  Seneca  Lake,  230. 

To  a  Waterfowl,  201. 

Tour  on  the  Prairies,  A,  91. 

Tramp  Abroad,  A,  255. 

Transcendentalist,  the,  130,  132. 

Travels,  Dwight's,  73. 

Treatise  Concerning  Religious  Affec 
tions,  43. 

True   Grandeur    of   Nations,    the, 

T95- 

True  Relation,  Smith's,  15. 
True  Repertory  of  the  Wrack  of  Sir 

Thomas  Gates,  9. 
Trumbull,  John.  67-69. 
Triumph  of  Infidelity,  72. 
Twice  Told  Tales,  151-53. 
Two  Rivers,  146. 
Tyler,  Royal,  79. 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE — INDEX. 


287 


Ullalume,  217. 

Uncle  Remus,  268. 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  229,  230. 

Under  the  Willows,  186. 

Undiscovered  Country,  the,  277. 

Unknown  Dead,  the,  243. 

Unseen  Spirits,  223. 

Valley  of  Unrest,  the,  214. 

Vanity  Fair,  251. 

Vassall  Morton,  190. 

Venetian  Life,  275. 

Views  Afoot,  225. 

Villa  Franca,  187. 

Village  Blacksmith,  the,  166. 

Virginia  Comedians,  the,  222. 

Vision  of  Columbus,  the,  70. 

Vision  of  Sir  Lannfal,  the,  184. 

Visit  from  St.  Nicholas,  A,  224. 

Voices  of  Freedom,  267. 

Voices  of  the  Night,  163,  165. 

Voluntaries,  143. 

Von  Kempelen/s  Discovery,  215. 

Walden,  144. 

Wants  of  Man,  the,  109. 

War  Lyrics,  243. 

Ward,  Nathaniel,  21. 

Ware,  Henry,  128. 

Washers  of  the  Shroud,  the,  187. 

Washington,  George,  60,  61,  63. 

Washington  as  a  Camp,  244. 

Washington  Square,  245. 

Webster,  Daniel,  no,  111-114,  IJ5- 

Webster's  Spelling  Book,  88. 

Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac 

Rivers,  A,  144. 
Western  Windows,  267. 
Westminster  Abbey,  99. 
Westover  MSS.,  the,  17. 


Westward  Ho !  91. 

What  Mr.  Robinson  Thinks,  183. 

Whistle,  the,  48. 

Whitaker,  Alexander,  19. 

White  R.  G.,  261. 

Whitman,  Walt,  232-37. 

Whittier,  J.  G.,  29,  38,  39,  168,  181, 

204-10,  230,  236,  244. 
VVieland,  80,  82. 
Wigglesworth,  Michael,  40. 
Wild  Honeysuckle,  the,  76. 
Wilde,  R.  H.,  108. 
William  Wilson,  218. 
Williams,  Roger,  25. 

Willis,  N.   P.,   00,    202,  222,    223,    225, 

231. 

Wilson,  Forceythe,  242. 

Winter  Evening  Hymn  to  My  Fire, 

186. 

Winthrop,  John.  10,  24,  26,  28-32. 
Winthrop,  Theodore,  244. 
Witchcraft,  188. 
Witch's  Daughter,  the,  206. 
Woman  in  the  Nineteenth  Century, 

136. 

Wonder  Book,  155. 
Wonders  of  the  Invisible  World,  24, 

38. 

Woods,  Leonard,  127. 
Woods  in  Winter,  163. 
Woodman,  Spare  that  Tree,  224. 
Woodworth,  Samuel,  108. 
Woolman's  Journal,  Sz-A*,     - 
Wrath  Upon  the  Wicked,  42. 
Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,  the,  166, 169. 

Yankee  Doodle,  73. 
Yankee  in  Canada,  144. 
Year's  Life,  A,  181. 
Yemassee,  the,  222. 


THE   END. 


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